Craggy Island

Here's an interesting thing: the Jane Austen conference website got 470 visitors on the day there were posts about it on Sarsaparilla, LP, and The Valve. Since then it's had brief mentions in each of the three main weekend broadsheets and on each occasion site traffic hasn't exceeded 100 visitors. Naturally allowance must be made for the fact that the idly curious will click on a link but only actual interest will make a person go from the newspaper to the computer and type in a URL. The really interesting thing is the number of media inquiries which have come out of those blog postings - since the posts and some other word-of-mouth type stuff through university networks is all the promotion that I've managed to do so far.

Incidentally if anyone who reads this blog is interested in coming to the conference, well, hesitate no more, and do let me know if you're coming (especially if you're coming from out of town or you're an impoverished student or something.)

The chooks still haven't produced any eggs: we thought they might materialise around the date of the election but it's beginning to look like the date the election is called might be closer to the mark. While they think about egg-laying the chooks have kept themselves busy eating all the leaves off my new rosebushes, and lurking outside the catflap so that Albie is too intimidated to go outside to empty his bowels of the more-than-one-cent-a-gram cat food he's so enamoured of. 23 hours a day, Albie sits hairily and sulkily on the armchair he's decided is his own personal property, intermittently letting out horrible smells from both ends, and telling other residents to feck off if they get too near. He ignores all remarks addressed to him but leaps to his feet when the sound of a can of Dine being opened reaches his ears.

The other two cats are Ted and Dougal, of course.

I bought some more old wallpaper off ebay with a view to putting it in the spare room, but now it's here I can't decide whether it's good or horrible. Maybe I'll put it up anyway; it's much cheaper (and easier) than paint.