The End?

Google Analytics sent me an unsolicited email yesterday. It had some very interesting statistics in it (I think).  They're rather complicated to understand, so I dont know if they're good or bad.

The email informed me that last month, out of 657 visitors to this website, 243 'exited' from this diary page. It's clearly not very good then. What an insult!  Except presumably those 243 visitors read a bit of it, before exiting in disgust.  Unless most of these were from me, checking that no further boring comments had been posted, requiring instant deletion.

So I still dont know exactly how many individual readers we're getting, because I can't work out which button to press. But my guess is that its now quite a lot more than 13, though still none from my target audience of bewildered, bemused, broke people freshly dumped from a relationship they felt was going well.

The trouble is, riding along on my horse this morning, I couldnt think of anything new to say.  Now we've done a year or more, the same old Goosey Fair, Dickensian Christmas etc are going to keep returning, round and round.  But I've got some news: 

WE'VE GOT OUR FIRST RETURNS!!!!!!!!!!!!

So after a little over a year's operation, our first returning visitors have re-booked for a weekend in November.  They are one of our favourite couples.  They were incredibly nice about it when we knocked their drying gilet, worth £120, onto the Aga and it melted. And together we finalised the names and content of our speciality breakfast of Eggs Florentine and Royale. Well the whole thing is a birthday surprise, so I'm not saying anything more, but it represents a turning point.  Some of our guests voting with their feet - in through the door, rather than out of it.  How wonderful!

Just as well, because I have over-honed down on the marketing, so business is a bit slow and I'm going to go overdrawn soon, unless some miracle happens. I'm back in touch with booking.com so they can start taking all my money again.  This is such a flexible business - you can turn it up and down, on or off, like the knobs on a radio!

Meanwhile Times Encounters has gone ballistic.  It is beyond me how the 'top twenty most popular people' cope, because I must be a long way off that, but I am being courted by several people 15 years my junior and cant really keep up! And highly erudite and flattering they are too!  I am going to become a worse show-off than ever at this rate!

Relationship-wise, there wont be anything concrete to report for months, because its not your business yet, so wedding bells is not going to be the ending to this book, if it ever becomes one.

And finally, in the summer, Beloved Daughter will start weekly boarding.  What shall I do all day?  Well that might just become the start of a new way of life and a whole new book perhaps!

So give me a sec, and I shall start looking into publishing this thing, and going mega-public.  How exciting this is going to be! Can't wait!