another milestone

Well I know my writing on the blog has slowed in the last year. It’s not that I’ve lost interest, far from it, nor that I’ve run out of subject matter – I’ve got more stuff half-written and saved in the draft facility than you can shake a stick at. It’s just that my time seems to be taken up on family and work matters now that we’ve moved back here more or less permanently. But I’m delighted to know that whilst the postings have slowed the blog continues to attract a constant audience of loyal readers which is just terrific. You might have noticed that recently we went through the 200,000 views mark, which is pretty staggering. It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since I did a recorded video posting (‘and now for something completely different’) thanking readers for their 100k viewings. And now we’ve doubled that somehow. It still amazes me. Many thanks folks.

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humble (ish)

Not a word that most folks in the know would associate with me I suspect. Overly-assertive, opinionated and critical are just three of my wife’s favourite descriptors. And she loves me, so you can imagine my detractors’ personal descriptions. But today this sad little grumpy old man’s rant site achieved another milestone – its 150,000th visitor. How many?  Just the ….

You can see why humble is not a word which naturally attracts itself to my description. But then again I am a bloody appreciative blogger –  or blagger for short.

And I’m pretty sure  this amazing total’s not down to my wife’s visits, who thinks I’m bloody boring and full of waffle. At least that’s what I pretend to think she said. Ah well I guess C gets the rambling verbal version of most of this stuff before you guys get the oh-so-crisp edited editions. Anyway I’m very grateful to all the readers who come by and simply look and read,  and especially grateful to those who actually comment on the postings – particularly those members of my extended family who seem to be my most assertive, opinionated and critical commentators. I wonder if there’s something in the blood-line?

Thank you one and all – I’m grateful for every single visit. Truly.

Do you want to know which postings have driven the most visits since I started this blog? Thought not but here they are anyway:

Home page	19,737
pretty woman	3,895
Ants!	3,513
syrups, it’s a pity!	2,775
dress sense…or not	1,665
great grass, man	1,661
effortlessly cool	1,610
palazzo ricci	1,563
just jules	1,431
it’s the little things that are so annoy	1,135
incomprehensible lyrics	1,006

Would you have figured that?  Nor me. Though it does suggest a lot of people check out the home page and decide to go no further. Oh come on folks; it’s only some opinion. I don’t really bite.

Anyway I seem to be full of the writing muse (not quite C’s words) at the moment so please keep checking in and I’ll try and write something worthy of your effort and interest. And if not it’ll be the same old, same old rants and ravings and ….rubbish.

Thanks a 6.7th of a million folks

pp

nappy you hear!

Did the brain see what it wanted to? Bet it caught none of you out. If not, ‘happy new year!’ properly. But let’s hope that 2009 is a lot more successful for all of us eh! Mind you I said that about 2008 and it’s been and gone without much positive impact. Never mind. I have fond memories of years ending in 9 so I’m hopeful this is going to be a breakthrough 12 months. And on the subject of numbers  we’ve just passed the 75,000th visit to the site, which is staggering. Many thanks to everyone who’s checked in to Pasta Paulie’s postings – unbelievably we’re heading for the 500th on the site. Where on earth did all this ranting and raving come from…?  The hosts of critics who said I was full of it were obviously right. 

pp

moving on up

I was just thinking about the band M People and Heather Small in particular. Her song Search for the Hero was the anthem to the London 2012 Bid I was involved with and it’s etched in my memory but I’ve heard nothing about Heather nor the band in a long time now. Does anyone have any news about them? I’m thinking of starting a feature on the blog called Whatever Happened To?…it’s hardly original but some people burn brightly in the public eye for years and seemingly vanish and it intrigues me how they disappear from general view. For example whatever became of Val Doonican, Mike Yarwood, Lorraine Chase, Tony Blair and so on?

wey hey, back online!

Well it’s been a while since I did the last posting – the reason, as ever, is down to a failure of bloody technology. More of that later. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks: C returned from the UK and I headed out there for some family stuff and business (covering a lot of miles in the process). Sadly I had to miss my awesome grandson G’s first birthday yesterday but I had some great quality time with the kids. Then what about all the footie I’ve missed commenting on – the mighty Reds Premiership title, Fulham’s great escape, the Blues last-day thrashing at Boro, Watford’s sad elimination in the play-offs, dirty Leeds getting through to the po final etc. I’m going to have to address that! In politics we’ve seen Boris elected as new mayor of London (what exactly did he stand for?) and Obama virtually seal the Democratic nomination. Apart from blowing a huge amount of her personal wealth what is Hillary doing by hanging on? Over here we’ve managed to virtually clear the whole garden (back’s broken), Scruff the mutt has been carted off to the kennels by neighbour P and we have old friends S and M arriving from America later today for a short stay followed by daughter S and I on Monday. Can’t wait. Busy, busy. I’ll be back with some proper postings soon. But did you notice we went through the 30,000 total visits mark during April including more than 5,000 visits during the month itself? That’s the first time we’ve achieved that. Thank you very much folks for checking in. Actually I’ve been doing this blog for a year now producing almost 300,000 words and having posted 372 of these rants and ramblings. I can’t believe I’ve been doing them one per day on average. I think I’m hooked on it – I need to get out more….

pp

numbers – alert!

How long is it since I wrote one of these (probably) annoying, (certainly) self-indulgent update postings on the status of the PP blog? Not long enough? Ha! Well here’s the 350th posting and the total word count is somewhere around the 250,000 mark now. That’s a lot of uninformed opinion. But more pleasing for me is the fact that the site has attracted more than 25,000 viewings which is staggering (well it is to me). Thank you very much for checking in folks. Traffic to the site has risen every month since my good friends at Knapp Goodwin/rActive Design created the site for me. Indeed last month we got soooo close to going through the 5000 visits mark in a single month for the first time. Damn we got close.

It would be brilliant to beat that mark this month (we’re about half way there) and to see overall viewings top 30,000. Of course I need to keep (or perhaps I should say start) writing stuff which is mildly interesting and the rest is down to you I guess. To help I’ve come across a thingy which allows you to be e-mailed with an automatic alert from Google on new postings on the site. If you can bear it just click on the following link and complete the simple instructions. Even I could do it.

Many thanks folks

Google post alert for Pasta Paulie

pp

office admin….and numbers

You may have detected a reluctance on my part to embrace bureaucracy – especially if you’d read my recent posting on tax returns (still not done). I hate forms and office processes and corporate nonsense. At BT we had to produce tons of meaningless stuff just to satisfy the God of Being Seen To Do The Right Thing; personal development plans, annual appraisals (the form was always more important than the guidance), personal/team/dept/LoB targets blah,blah, blah. Once I’d left and set up my own company I thought I’d left all that behind. Of course it’s still there – in a different form but I’m no fonder of it.

the lottery; or is it?

Buying a lottery ticket has been an important part of our financial strategy this year; it’s also been the bit that hasn’t worked terribly successfully. We haven’t even got close to 3 numbers let alone 6. We don’t employ a lot of strategy about our number selection. Last week with the big rollover jackpot on offer, and for a change, C tried the birthdays routine and even got our beautiful grandson to draw numbers from a hat hoping that his innocence and sweet nature would melt the hearts of the Camelot Gods. Of course neither routine worked; would I be writing this blog with £18m in my pocket?