Saucy Stories Etc.

Is this what you were after?

The technical masterminds behind Blogger at some point over the past few years added all kinds of tricks and buttons that allow you to see how many people actually read this nonsense, and where they’re from. For some reason, outside of the US and the UK, I have a lot of readers in Denmark, even though I don’t know a soul who lives there. Maybe they’ve heard that when I’m drunk, I’m prone to break into song and warble “Wonderful wonderful Copenhagen/Salty old dog of the sea.” Though of course that song’s about a boat, not about Copenhagen itself, which I visited once on a press trip. I’d love to tell you more, but the memory’s lost in a fog of hard Nordic liquor hastily downed to try and shut out the sound of British businessmen telling jokes as dull as their pre-tailored polyester suits.

There are also a few visitors from Germany, but that’s just the in-laws checking up to see if I’ve written something derogatory about Dresden again. Every time I visit them, any woman in the state of Saxony who does not have aubergine-coloured hair is pointedly pointed out to me. I would just like to say for the record that Dresden, in particular the suburb of Hainsberg, I love you.

The other thing Blogger lets you see are the search terms that lead people to your blog. It turns out that the lead search term is “saucy stories”, thanks to this rather meandering entry almost a year ago about a trip to Safeway to buy Worcestershire sauce.
I can barely begin to imagine the look of disappointment on the searchers’ faces when, in a mood for something perhaps more stimulating, they discover four paragraphs of verbose bollocks about the dilemma of buying Lea & Perrins or Safeway’s own-brand condiments. They might as well have taken an ice bath.

It has prompted me, however, to hatch a cunning plan to up my blog traffic. Did you not already notice the gratuitous headline? Of course you did. And I bet you were hoping for some filth and scandal, just like those sweating, saucy-story addicts. So let the seedy surfers flock to this small corner of indie-popdom, and you can bet they’ll want to stay once they get to reading all about the crazy stuff that stay-at-home dads get up to out here, grocery shopping and getting annoyed by really minor things and recording crap songs in their basement for an unsuspecting world that has 25 million other recordings to choose from instead.

Maybe I should tour Denmark. I think I could be big in Denmark. “Wonderful wonderful Copenhagen…” Except that beyond that first line, I don’t know any more. I’ll just sing something saucy instead. That’ll get their attention.    


[Edit: December 2011 - I have now altered the headline to delete the words "naughty nymphos, horny housewives" as this story was regularly and depressingly at the top of my viewing stats, no doubt due to well-intentioned google searches]