LONDON SEASON (n.) Summer parade where eligible girls are doth paraded for masculine inspection for matrimony.
Dr. Johnson’s London Dictionary for publick consumption in the twenty-first century avail yourself on Twitter @JohnsonsLondon
Statistics 2023
This rather niche post has been running now for over half the life of the blog, and why anyone would want to read this rather self-indulgent posting I’ve yet to fathom, but some of you still keep coming back. At the time of the first post I described CabbieBlog as ‘an eclectic mix of tips, tours, trivia and tripe’ and I’m rather proud that that dubious standard has been maintained with posts this year about obsolete telephone technology, felled Ulez cameras and eating Trafalgar Square’s pigeons, all of which are hardly ‘must read’ subject material for the average person in the street. I’ve tried to provide you with a varied diet, rather than endless recycled press releases, mainly because I believe there’s still demand for original subject matter. Despite my herculean endeavours, my readership has diminished over time, the young have better things to do than read about cabbie slang, data on the times it has snowed at Christmas in London, or a taxi being converted to cook pie and mash.
I guess that much of my core readership has reached an age when experience supersedes enthusiasm, and I assume that you either keep coming back for the blog’s variety, while, at the time, you can indulge me with the personally irrelevant stuff, since you now have time on your hands.
A regular CabbieBlog whinge this year has been that this platform (WordPress) is slowly transforming into a program aimed at professional website designers and is becoming harder to use by we hobbyists. Last year I mentioned starting Unblogged London on Substack a fairly new platform upon which I write long-form essays at irregular intervals. I can see, probably sometime this year, my ability to code the daily posts becoming so much of a chore that I’ll have to abandon producing daily material posted at 1.50 pm.
So with more information than you probably wanted to know about me, here are the annual blogging statistics for 2023. As before, with the data amassed over the last year, I’ve broken it down into bite-sized chunks with comparable figures for the previous year.
Blog visitors and page views
The halcyon days of blogging are truly over and CabbieBlog’s ‘hits’ reflect this fact. In addition, as I wrote last year copyright trolls now peruse the Internet. At some time I may have inadvertently used a copyrighted image taken from a site that claims its contents are published under a Creative Commons Licence. To avoid being prosecuted for copyright infringement many posts are now password protected thus enabling me to check out the content before allowing viewing, this lack of access has inevitably reduced the hit rate. These figures don’t include those who lazily use an RSS feed to gather posts to peruse, I’m only counting visitors who come to CabbieBlog not readers that the blog goes to them. (Average hit rate per visitor: 2022 – 1.5461; 2023 – 1.5389
2022
Visitors – 27,686
Pageviews – 42,807
2023
Visitors – 22,201
Pageviews – 34,166
CabbieBlog’s readers from abroad
Once again this year has seen a drop in the number of individual countries checking out CabbieBlog. Curiously one hit was recorded from ‘Unknown Region’, I’m hoping it’s from the International Space Station, but in reality, it is probably just a glitch. The United States leads our curious cousins with 4,492 a drop of 1,131 hits since last year.
2022 – 129 individual countries
2023 – 123 individual countries
Number of comments
When socials first hit Cyberverse’s street, we realised that we could interact with strangers. Despite all the bad press some of these apps have received, here on CabbieBlog interaction with others is not only encouraged but it’s this interaction with others that keeps me going. Again a huge thank you for your encouragement or discouragement, your comments keep me submitting daily regular posts for your perusal.
2022 – 1,115
2023 – 937
Number of ‘Likes’
CabbieBlog’s hit rate might be lower these days, but curiously likes are increasing. I can’t work out whether they’re the equivalent of a firm handshake or denote just a brief nod upon passing. Whatever your like indicates, a big thank you for touching the Like button found at the foot of every post.
2022 – 1,043
2023 – 1,084
Followers of CabbieBlog
From what can understand (which is usually limited), because WordPress refuses to cross Elon Musk’s palm with silver, my followers from X aren’t recorded, in fact, they don’t now receive my pearls of wisdom. As a consequence, numbers have fallen sharply. Thanks to all of you for following CabbieBlog, however you receive notifications of postings.
2022 – 1,410
2023 – 396
Posts written
Monday’s Quotations obviously are not written by me and therefore are not included in the count, likewise Previously Posted are not included in these figures as they were, well previously posted. I’m still posting something 7 days a week, the data reflects my industrious output.
2022 – 292
2023 – 262
Most viewed and least viewed posts and pages
It has to be said that some subjects take on a life of their own, while others just sit in cyberspace minding their own business. At the bottom lie many posts with only a few views a year, unfortunately WordPress don’t now record the unread pages and posts, and so there might be many just waiting to be discovered.
2022
Highest post
Who remembers the characters of London? – 1,259
Lowest Post
Shakespeare in Love – 13
Highest page
The Knowledge – 2,482
Lowest page
The small print – 17
2023
Highest post
London’s top secret tower – 581
Lowest Post
Statistics 2021 – 9
Highest page
The Knowledge – 1,886
Lowest page
Privacy Policy – 10
Pages written
Due to the aforementioned Copyright Conundrum, I’ve written a page laying out CabbieBlog’s approach to copyright infringement.
2022 – 0
2023 – 1
Number of words written
I must be writing shorter posts these days, now I’ve finished my book I’ve no excuse, I’ll have to up my game.
2022
Words – 72,478
Characters – 425,158
2023
Words – 55,409
Characters – 325,547
Referrers
If you ignore the search engines, clocking up an impressive 18,100 hits, social media referrers are Twitter X at 722 and, surprisingly, as I haven’t an account, Facebook at 302. These are the top independent referrers.
2022
A London Inheritance – 66
Diamond Geezer – 21
2023
Tigergrowl – 72
A London Inheritance – 69
In conclusion
I didn’t mean for this blog to last for 15 years. I thought I’d start a blog (with no real thought of audience, content or duration), after work one evening on a platform named blog and naturally I assumed the name – cabbie. I then had a dabble at Google’s Blogger, finally settling on the WordPress platform on 23rd February 2009. Weblogs were at the time a burgeoning means of online communication, so it seemed a sensible use of my spare time. And here we are 5,483 days later still writing and reading about London.
London in Quotations: Sophie Kinsella
Commuting in London is basically warfare. It’s a constant campaign of claiming territory; inching forward; never relaxing for a moment. Because if you do, someone will step past you. Or step on you.
Sophie Kinsella (b.1969), My Not So Perfect Life
London Trivia: Ripper debut
On 25 February 1888 Annie Millwood was admitted to Whitechapel Workhouse Infirmary with stabs to her legs and lower torso it was believed to be the first Ripper victim. Severn Klosowski was hanged on 7 April 1903 for the poisoning of his wife, his three other spouses had died under mysterious circumstances. Inspector John Abberline the policeman in charge of the Ripper case suspected Klosowski was also the Ripper.
On 25 February 1899 Edwin Sewell became the first to die in a car accident when the rear wheels collapsed testing a Daimler down Grove Hill, Harrow
In Wapping bodies of hanged pirates were left in the Thames for three tides to wash over them before being removed for burial
From 1808 to 1814 Hampstead Heath had a shutter telegraph chain conveying information by visual signals, using towers with pivoting shutters, connecting the Admiralty to naval ships in Great Yarmouth
Missionary David Livingstone laid in repose at 1 Savile Row, HQ of the Royal Geographical Society, now it’s the bespoke tailors Gieves and Hawkes
Thatcher used to stand on a chair in her Commons room to check the top of the door, “It’s the way you know if a room’s really been cleaned”
The fictitious station of Walford East, which features in the long-running soap opera Eastenders, is supposed to be on the District Line
Upper Street, nicknamed as Supper Street, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the United Kingdom
Formed in 1886 Queen’s Park Rangers have moved 15 times and had 12 grounds, a record for any other London football club
The Seven Sisters Underground station is believed to have been named after a line of elm trees which stood nearby until the 1830s
In South Street, Mayfair there is a plaque to Catherine Walters known as ‘Skittles’ and described as London’s last Victorian Courtesan
The Museum of London has a whole drawer of codpieces that one embarrassed Victorian curator catalogued as ‘shoulder pads’
Trivial Matter: London in 140 characters is taken from the daily Twitter feed @cabbieblog.
A guide to the symbols used here and source material can be found on the Trivial Matter page.
Previously Posted: Committed to committee
For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.
Committed to Committee (01.02.11)
What’s the difference between the Millennium Dome and the O2 Centre? Well, when the Dome was conceived and built on the Greenwich Peninsular – probably the most inaccessible spot on the planet – the “stuff” the Dome contained was chosen by a committee; worse than that, it was a Government appointed committee. So after deliberating interminably they came up with riveting ideas to pull in the punter, such as Faith: Making of Key Life Experiences, How Shall I Live?
Within one month of its opening it was running at a loss, nobody wanted to enter its canvas portals. Even the charismatic and talented Pierre-Yves Gerbeau could not persuade people to cough up the cash for a visit.
When it closed it was costing over £250,000 a month just to sit there gathering dust. Then the American billionaire Philip Anschutz came along, bought the place and spruced it up and persuaded O2 to sponsor the place to the tune of £6 million. And do you know what? With a government committee allowed nowhere near the place it’s been voted three years running as the world’s favourite popular music venue selling 75 per cent more tickets than its nearest rival. Yes, that’s right, better than Madison Square Garden, Wembley Arena or Sportpaleis in Belgium. An oversized tent in the middle of nowhere surrounded on three sides by water the world’s favourite – amazing.
Roll on a decade and we now have the Olympic Delivery Authority getting their collective knickers in a twist over who will take on the 2012 Stadium in east London.
Now here I should declare an interest – or more accurately – a non-interest, I don’t follow football. Get in my cab and I won’t be regaling you with my opinion of the upcoming transfer window; my interpretation of the offside rule, or for that matter; talking about Beckham’s left foot. What does rather exercise my brain however is how this Government, through its committees, spend my hard earned taxes.
The Olympic Stadium which is expected to cost £547 million and seat 80,000 spectators, who might be expected to pay on average say, £20 per seat per day, and given that the 2012 Olympic Games will last 17 days plus 12 days for the Paralympic Games, £46.4 million could be generated from ticket sales. That is if the Olympian God of profit (Dionysus the God of wine, celebrations and ecstasy possibly) was on their side,but unfortunately that leaves a short fall of at least £500 million.
Now two London football clubs are bidding for the venue. The original design allowed for 55,000 seats to be removed at the end of the 2012 Olympics which seems to be agreeable for West Ham with their smaller gate, but they apparently need a Government subsidy to pay for the Stadium. The other contender is cash rich Tottenham who have promised to redevelop the dilapidated athletics facility at Crystal Palace as part of their bid to take on the Olympic Stadium, which they intend to demolish and rebuild without the running track. Who want to demolish the stadium and as a sweetener is prepared to upgrade Crystal Palace Sports Centre, seems crazy to me. Why don’t Spurs just build a new stadium – in say – Tottenham?
Anyway my advice to both clubs don’t employ a government committee to help you in your endeavours, you’ll be bankrupt before next season.
CabbieBlog 