The Strange Case of the Invisible Visitors

Good morning Dear Reader. Today’s post is a little earlier than usual because I am heading into town to do some shopping, and maybe even have a spot of lunch. Before I begin, a quick announcement. You may notice the search thingy is missing, I’m afraid I had to remove it, it was driving me nuts. Or, more specifically the constant stream of emails it was sending me. You see, every time a search was made using the thingy, an email was sent to let me know. This sounded very useful in theory. In practice it was completely bloody annoying. All day yesterday these messages were coming in, and initially it seemed that there had been a sudden stampede of visitors all searching away merrily for terms that were already listed in the thingy. Guessing that a stampede was unlikely, I checked the site stats, and discovered none of these visitors were registering, regular readers were logged, but all these extra folk were nowhere to be seen. How mysterious. Invisible visitors. Maybe launching my blog into space had attracted a host of alien visitors. I pondered for a few moments over the possibility that I had become the subject of blogging’s equivalent of the Twilight Zone (doo doo do do) when the answer suddenly became obvious. The daft search thingy was logging search bots. Each time a bot visited, it was following the links in the search thingy, and this was registering as a search. Deciding that this rather defeated the object of having the thing in the first place I removed it. It is supposed to track the searches made by humans, not bots, who may be very cute but aren’t entitled to an opinion.

Our cat, Stiltzkin, is missing. He went out on Tuesday evening and hasn’t come home. It’s very worrying because usually he doesn’t go very far for very long, really it’s a case of nipping out, having a quick poo, and dashing back in. The good news is, we haven’t heard of any cats being run over. So, we are keeping our fingers crossed that he has got locked inside a shed or greenhouse and will return home hungry but unharmed. He will then be reintroduced to the litter tray he has been so reluctant to use and alfresco poos will be a thing of the past.

I’m not sure if I should say this in case I jinx the whole thing, but, I think Spring may finally have arrived. The weather over the last couple of days has been, well, distinctly Springlike. A bit chilly, but with clear blue skies, and hours of sunshine. It’s great! I have become so tired of what seemed to be an endless winter, it’s actually quite depressing. By this time of year you kind of expect the weather to improve, and when it doesn’t it throws you out of sync. I can’t wait to put away my winter woollies, and I have a really pretty pair of sandals I bought in the autumn sales I haven’t had a chance to wear. It’s definitely not sandal weather yet, but it’s heading in the right direction.

Well, now I must be off, have a great day

Listening to: birds twittering and the pesky bin men coming up the road making their usual racket.