I can't think about anything else!  Every spare minute - while Beloved Daughter practises Ballade on the piano, or gorges herself on Nutella and B&B leftover bread for breakfast - there I am on my i-pad, checking my ranking on Trip Advisor and making myself frustrated and envious as I compare my marks with other establishments' 10 out of 10s!  I had no idea I was so competitive.  I think it's an addiction.

Further to my last post, I've been tweaking my website daily, so that when guests arrive they are braced to find no hanging space and a total absence of what I have rather cleverly referred to as  'slick, sleek, urban chic'.

As I said before, I want them to realize that I am the most expensive B&B on Dartmoor (I have started loosing blobs under the 'value for money section')  because of (1) the amazing location,  and (2) my brilliant service and personality. Not because I offer the most utterly incredible rooms in the universe.

I've pulled back from the 'you may find muddy pawprints and the shower's temperamental' allusions,  but on the inside pages I have broadly hinted at such things.

Anyway, the results of my obsession are now there for all to see.  I am inordinately proud, smug and boring about it.  Read on.

I had my monthly meeting with my local girlfriends (The Thunderbirds) plus partners last night, and asked them to play my new game.  "Anyone with Safari on their phones, plug in 'Luxury Dartmoor B&B' on Google Search " I ordered them.

Hah hah!!!  Up came Wydemeet!! SECOND!!!! Out of 180 B&Bs on Dartmoor!!  Page ONE!  Along with Bovey Castle and Browns Hotel!  How clever am I?  So all these hours and days spent giving myself headaches and getting irritable, immersing myself in Search Engine Optimization (SEO to geeks), has been worth it! Maybe I have a new career here!

So all is going according to plan, and my next stage will be to sack all the agents who charge me 15% commission on every booking made through them, and wait for guests to come flooding in to me direct!

Except that they're not.  Demand has fallen off a cliff. Null pointes. Zero.  I've got two more couples in October and then that's it.  Such a weird life.

Meanwhile I think I've booked the house out for a week over Christmas to a lovely sounding extended family with small children and three dogs (eek); as well as receiving my first enquiry for summer 2014.  Directly through my newly highly visible website as is now usual. Preen.

So dear Sashka is back to normal, catering just for Lady Muck, who lies in bed til 10.30am now she's got the chance to do so again.  But the difference is that I am feeling financially secure again, for the first time since the marriage bust-up four years ago. Yes - those children will benefit from an elitist, privileged, divisive education, turning them into people who haven't got a clue about the real world. Why? Why do we kill oursevles to achieve that?  God knows.

What has caught me most by surprise since I started this business, is how much our guests love our mutt, Twiglet.

They keep smuggling him into their bedrooms, where he will leave muddy pawprints on my best white Egyptian cotton bedlinen; and nearly all the comments in our visitors' book appear to be more about him than anyone else!

Beloved Daughter has started a website about him.  It is called www.gotwiglet.com; so if you have any nice pictures of him, feel free to send them there!

I think 'management of expectations' is critical to one's reaction to almost everything in life.

I was very upset the other day, because a nice, and I believe well intentioned, lady called Tina gave me the most fantastic write-up on Trip Advisor, with full marks for everything they list such as room, value, service, sleep quality etc; but overall she only gave me four blobs.  This is worse than no write-up, as it will pull down my ratings.  It's already made me slip down from No 34 to No 46 out of 172 B&Bs on Dartmoor.  And I am determined to be Numero Uno!

I've been battling with myself since about what, if anything, to do about it. Should I contact her? Was it a mistake? If it wasn't, I just don't want to know what she didn't like about my perfect home.  Perhaps it was too quiet and remote for her?

But I've come up with an answer.  I must make sure that these lovely guests of mine don't expect to find the equivalent of a Holiday Inn in my family home nestling in the wilds of Dartmoor.

So I've amended my website (www.wydemeet-dartmoor.com), and told them!  "Expect to come across drawer-fulls of stored ski-clothes, family photographs and old lipstick, the odd muddy paw-print and a shower with a mind of its own," I've written.  I am very curious as to whether this is going to increase, or decrease, bookings.  I don't really care either way, because it is all going so well that I wouldn't object to a bit of a rest.  What I really, utterly, absolutely couldn't stand, would be for someone to arrive with the wrong expectations, and to be disappointed.

The most expensive room on offer, which I've called 'Hexworthy', is actually my bedroom, but I cant be arsed to move out of it for less than £260 (£130 per night, 'including scrumptuous breakfast of local produce', available only for a minimum of two nights).  This must be the most pricey B&B bedroom on Dartmoor, so I think some of my guests are a little surprised to find themselves sharing my walk-in cupboard complete with underwear shelf, and the dressing table drawers all stuffed with unused nail varnish and body lotion.  And to get rid of every carpet stain made by children and dogs over the past fifteen years would have meant re-carpeting the whole thing.  So I haven't.

Instead we have to play on Wydemeet's unique location, and my magnetic personality.  Seems to be working most of the time.  I nearly cried when by chance just today I came across lovely Tracy's review, complete with the full quota of blobs, headed: "Perfection!!! Great Host, Wonderful Setting and the Best Nights Sleep away from Home in Years!!!!"

And I was most gratified by a recent American guest's reaction when I showed him Hexworthy in all its glory. "Holy Cow!" he exclaimed.

Now the holidays are over and everyone's back to school I thought things might calm down a bit.  But no! The bookings just keep on coming!  I keep wondering whether I might soon move back into my (the best, obviously) room, and then someone else books it! Good! I am very comfy in Revered Son's hideaway in the attic, while he is away at boarding school.

I had wondered how logistically it was going to work, incorporating Beloved Daughter's school run into making breakfast.  But so far it's fine.  If anyone wants a cooked breakfast between 8.05am and 9am Sashka is kindly available to help on Monday's and Friday's; and I'm here on Saturday's and Sunday's.  Which leaves Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for the odd occasion when this might prove a potential issue.  In which case Beloved Daughter will have fun enjoying a sleepover at a friend's house; or flexi-boarding at the school.

So all appears to be working remarkably well to date, and I'm looking forward to making six new friends this weekend!

Tomorrow it's Widecombe Fair.

I feel like I'm a mole.  That's been underground for a long time and has suddenly emerged into the light and air, and who, all of a sudden, after days and weeks, has space to move around in and stretch.

I've got time to write a blog, play the piano, have a bath in my own bathroom, and go out to dinner at the Peter Tavy with Esteemed Partner to celebrate the clear fact that my B&B and house rentals are, without any doubt at all, a resounding success.

I am such a perfectionist in my work that it has been something of a roller-coaster though.  Sometimes it has felt that anything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong.  And because I suffer from early onset dementia - well it feels like it to me anyway - I always seem to forget something.  And I simply cannot bear to make mistakes and get things wrong. Or get told off.  I have been moving around in a state of exhausted, permanent, apprehension.

All my guests have been extremely nice about this though, and many have just laughed at the inevitable errors of a new B&B-er.

My first four visitors all arrived at once and honestly, they were so nice, and so along the same lines as Esteemed Partner and myself, that I really felt, had they lived around here, they would have become close friends.

When the new loo lever went wrong, Robert mended it himself, and when the adapter for the silly continentally plugged kettles blew up because it was meant for 1 amp shavers, he personally went to Newton Abbot to buy three sensible adapters from the pound shop, and refused to accept payment for them.

A more mature couple,  with the most delightful little dog called 'Spud', found that despite my changing all the telly's from 'freeview' to 'freesat' at late notice and vast expense, they still didnt work, nor did the light switch in their bathroom.  Having silently lost my temper inside my head on both counts, I subsequently discovered there was nothing wrong with either - we had simply been using the wrong switches.  I wrote down their breakfast requests, but then didn't read my notes and only gave them one poached egg instead of two, and forgot to lay any cups or glasses; yet despite all this I felt they became very fond of and paternal towards me.

I have repeatedly not quite finished laying the table when my guests appear for breakfast at the time they said they would come, and on one occasion I forgot to offer them tea or coffee!  Sometimes I forget to wear an apron, or even put on some shoes for serving!

I have finally learned how not to over-book, with all the calendars I have to complete for every booking; but the worst moment was when I came back to find the kitchen awash.  'Agh, those delightful swiss children have left the bathwater running with plug left in," I thought. But no - water was pouring through the ceiling into my £90 room, 'Bellever'.  Meanwhile a car came up the drive, which was the guest that I had already double-booked and who I had had to move down to Bellever from the poshest room (my room) which he originally asked for.

We sat at the garden table in the sun, while I had a Cava and a fag, and explained the situation to him, while Esteemed Partner hot-footed it over from Ashburton to help solve the problem, as the water continued to pour down.

I will tell you what happened next when I get around to it!

Today I served my 100th breakfast since everything went mad three weeks ago. Phew.  I am exhausted.  Cream Crackered.  I haven't been able to do or think about anything apart from Bed and Breakfast now for nearly a month.

My cleaner, Sashka, is laughing her head off to see Lady Muck with her head down a loo cleaning up other people's poo.  I have gone back to being a (very well remunerated) chambermaid - a job I last did when I was 17.

I thought this B&B lark was money for old rope to begin with.  That was when I had the odd couple staying for a couple of nights occasionally.

Instead, I have found I have never worked so hard, under such pressure, for such a sustained period of time, in my life.  Well actually since I was publicising X finally succeeding in his world record attempt on the North Pole back in 2003.

My current guests are a jolly band of four from down the road in Plymouth, who were looking for somewhere remote to stay, so that they could make as much noise as they liked without disturbing anyone, while enjoying champagne and several bottles of gold leaf cinammon flavoured vodka, celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary.  I wanted to give them an award for receiving my 100th breakfast, complete with its very Best Eggs In The World courtesy Kind Neighbours, but I couldn't think what to give them, so I didn't.

Tonight I get my own bedroom back at last.  I have been dossing in whatever bed happened to be available at the time, with all my things packed into a green Tesco crate, as I moved from room to room.  Last night it was Revered Son's bed again (he was away at a party in Dorset, and I am dreading finding out what he got up to there) which is two floors away from the nearest available plumbing.

This is the first moment I've had when I could put fingers to keyboard and draft a blog, since before we went on our uber-luxury holiday in Tuscany, courtesy my kind sister,  at the end of last month.  It has all been an extraordinary and surreal experience.  Ask me for 'sunny side up', 'easy over', 'egg over hard', fried, poached, scrambled or boiled - I can do the lot.  It has been terrifying, but at last I am gathering up the blobs on Trip Advisor and everybody appears to be having a very jolly time here.  Hurray!  I love my home being used for what it does best.  A jolly good party!

I thought it would never happen. No one came.

And then suddenly - floodgates!

Over the last three weeks I have served over 100 individual breakfasts! It's gone quite mad! And what fun it all is!

We've had breakfast in the dining room and in the garden, the weather has been out of this world, and we have developed what we call 'The Wydemeet Challenge' - a twenty mile yomp there and back across the most varied terrain of central Dartmoor, to 'The Warren House Inn' - the second highest pub in England.

I always offer to collect anyone who gets too tired, but have only been asked to once.  The second person to complete the challenge was a swiss twelve year old boy, who set out with the rest of his family at 10.30am, and returned at 6.30pm, ready for a sumptuous dinner at Prince Hall Hotel!

We don't have plans to start making it into a race at this stage!

Well, I was going to write about my perfect moment as follows:

Wow! Wow! Wow!  I am reclining here in the dark on my newly-oiled teak sun-lounger, with a full moon gazing down upon me through the gap in the trees, picking on Lidl's 70% cocoa solids dark chocolate with raspberries, enjoying a fag, and a chilled glass of Naked Wine's Mar del Sur; while Revered Son lies back in the hot tub before me, reading a dodgy-looking novel called 'The Vincent Boys', illuminated occasionally by flashing  blue, orange and blood red strobe lights; his tea, lap-top and i-pod next to him, positioned on the shelf by his head,  playing music, some of which I know and actually quite like,as the smell of honeysuckle permeates through to us both.

The house is clean and tidy, the lawn and patio immaculate, the tubs of flowers and herbs still alive, my pots of cooking oil, beverages, preserves, tins of baked beans, herbs and spices all in their neat OCD rows, everything just as I want it, awaiting the arrival of my guests on Saturday, while we catch EasyJet to Pisa and drive on to Sienna, to stay in a luxury pad even lovelier than ours, to relax for a week with 14 other members of the immediate family, courtesy my lovely sister.

Tomorrow the window cleaner, telly man, hot tub man, and my 'Mr Fixit Team' arrive to finish everything off, while I live up to my new persona of 'Mad Mower of the Moor'.

I've just received a B&B booking for two rooms for mid-August for a couple of nights from a German family.  We've arrived.  We're going to be OK.  And the unforeseen bonus is that this holiday lettings/B&B thing means that you can spend time and money making your home really nice, just as you'd always hoped it might be, guilt-free - and get paid for the privilege.  Bingo! All is right in my world.

But.  It has taken 45 minutes for my i-pad not to log on to this site, so I've had to come indoors two floors up to my normal computer, which still took another 20 minutes to work, we are so far from a proper broadband connection, and it is now well past bedtime at one o'clock in the morning, so I am in a bait. 

I have decided that I am going to offer the best B&B on the moor.

This, of course, means the most expensive.  But I'm still cheaper than a hotel, and I'm not liable for VAT yet, which means 20% off for guests - or 20% more for me - one or the other.  If I have sufficiently few guests so that I can manage all the work myself I should be quids in!

The reason I have been 'off air' recently is because I have been trying to market the thing.  After three months I have felt as though I have been banging my head against a brick wall until it bleeds.  I have become increasingly frustrated and irritable as nothing I do seems to work, and all appears out of my control.

I used to style myself modestly as 'Queen of PR'.  I could make anyone famous, and get any crappy old product into the national papers for free. Well these talents are now redundant. These days I have just one simple marketing goal.  That if you plug 'Dartmoor B&B' into Google's search engine, up comes Wydemeet. Simples. Not. These three months I have got nowhere.

Owners Direct - for holiday rentals - no enquiries since January, despite my putting a 20% reduction on my prices.

Trip Advisor - after three months they have still failed to put me on their map, and I am languishing at No 47 in their 'Top 166 B&Bs in Dartmoor'. They refuse to include any contact details unless you pay, and finally I got myself signed up with LateRooms who include a Booking Diary on Trip Advisor if you push hard enough to remind them to sort it out for you.

AdWords - they're the ones that come up in the yellow box, or are listed down the side when you do a Google search. Every time somebody clicks on them it costs the advertiser around £1 according to a complicated kind of auction-system. You have to make up several very short ads, and fill in columns and columns of keywords and phrases (I completed over 200 in the end) to make sure they come up according to the various searches potential guests might make (most of which contain spelling mistakes such as acomodation).  I upped my budget to £5 a day and my ads started appearing on the front page occasionally, but the campaign has come to nothing so I have cancelled my subscription.

LateRooms - I spent hours sorting out details of what should go on their website, and then changed to a company called Eviivo, which covers LateRooms, TopRooms, LastMinutedotCom, Expedia and about 30 others, all at once. So I needn't have bothered. It took two weeks to get up and running with Eviivo - quite quick in this business.  They were sensible and efficient to work with. What a relief!

Booking.Com - operates separately from Eviivo. Loony company.  Writes its own copy and chooses what pictures to use and in what order.  My greatest asset, according to them, was that I offer 'easy access' to the ghastly Torquay (25 miles away), and the first picture they used to advertise my home was one of a silver horse and some glasses on my dining room table.

Air BnB - operates differently from the above agencies.  The others mostly charge me 15% commission per booking.  Air BnB charges both customers and operators. Canny! And they are flying, judging by the number of enquiries I have been gettting from them.  And easy to set up on.

God of B&Bs - has gone away to France so I won't be on his website until after he gets back.

Search Engine Optimisation. Otherwise known as SEO.  Hah! How modern am I to know that? I have been working on optimising my own website www.wydemeet-dartmoor.com.  You have to list lots of 'key words' in your copy and behind the scenes in special hard-to-find sections of your website, add a blog, use captions with capital letters in under your photo's, etc etc etc.  Apparently it can take six months for all these little touches to start working, once Google's 'spiders' have crawled all around them.  It is an ancient myth that the more clicks you get, the higher up you appear. So far I'm nowhere - not even on page 12 of search results!

YouTube: on one of our rare sunny days I grabbed the opportunity to film the garden and a bedroom I've called 'Dartmeet', and put the results up on YouTube, using as many keywords as I could think of, accompanying the footage with a Chopin Nocturne for the bedroom, and a quick blast of Beethoven's Pastoral for the outside footage.  This has put me onto page 6 of Google Search, but somebody not very kind has added a 'dislike' little sign to my bedroom film.  Perhaps they thought the use of one of the most beautiful tunes ever written, to advertise a B&B, was naff.

So I have been busy.  With zero result.  No other accommodation in the area is following up so many marketing avenues, as far as I am aware. So what's the problem? That I am up there too late in the season, that I am too expensive, that I am too dictatorial demanding a minimum of two nights, that the place is let out for a week in July, that I am new, so that I am at the bottom of all the marketing arms with no reviews as yet and have no repeat business?  Or possibly just because I am horrid.

All this remains to be seen.  At least I now have an on-line presence.  Which means that I can calm down, leave my computer for a few minutes a day, and be a bit nicer to people around me.

And I remain firmly optimistic that very soon it will all begin to gather momentum and in due course I will be over-inundated with bookings.  Watch this space!