Writing a Travel Diary or Blog - Angela Lansbury on Overcoming Writer's Block

You can write about your travels in a daily blog (which means web log, like a ship's log). 

Anne Frank did not travel anywhere but had plenty to say.

Published 1917. Painting titled The Passion of Creationg by artist Leonid Pasternak, of his son the writer.

He had writer's block once. It was the worst ten minutes of his life.

• Harlan Ellison, about Isaac Asimov – quoted in Page Fright : Foibles and Fetishes of Famous Writers (2009) by Harry Bruce
• 
  

Useful Websites

WIKIQUOTE

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Writer%27s_block

WIKIPEDIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writer%27s_block

About the Author

Angela Lansbury, is a semi-retired travel writer still researching bucket list countries and seeking out the special, unusual, people, places,  landmarks, hotels, museums and trails, fabulous foods, recipes, clothes and online souvenir shopping.

Angela Lansbury is a member of Toastmasters International.

About the Author Angela Lansbury

The Author - Quick Quotations

Angela Lansbury B A Hons  is the author of ten books by regular publishers plus another ten self-published books. 

About Angela The Speaker & Trainer

Angela Lansbury is a teacher of English and other languages to Toastmasters clubs and businesses.

Braddell Heights Advanced Toastmasters Speakers Vice President  Public Relations, Immediate Past President. VPPR

Former Area Director S3. Club Coach for Nee Soon South Toastmasters Club.

Also Member of: TCA Toastmasters Club; Singapore Online Dynamic; Harrovians UK

Past meetings have included Garen Tee on using story telling in business, on bha.learncool.sg . 

Recent meetings of BHA included an educational session on using Powerpoint for posters.

Next BHA meetings, always first Wednesday evening, 7 pm Singapore time. Next meeting is  the third Saturday afternoon, June 19th 2pm Singapore time.  Inauguration of the new committee by the incoming Director of S, plus a lively speech on teamwork.

 

Angela The Blogger 

Angela has several blogs speeches, comedy and song writing and organizing, writing intermittently, but writes almost daily on these three:

travelwithangelalansbury.blogspot.com

dressofthedayangela.blogspot.com

translateforfun.blogspot.com

See next post on sculptor Tom Harvey.

Please share links to your favourite posts. 

Blogger Changes and Your blog

These changes are scary. When I started a new blog on Wordpress. Their basic system is free and took me a week to learn. It is full of features.

It took me a while to work out.
Blogger is so much easier and saves automatically. I had far more readers on blogspot.

 My SEO adviser (my son Anthony of Marketappeal told me that if I duplicated posts on Wordpress they would not get noted by Google. So I didn't bother. I also thought people would be annoyed to read the same post twice in different places.

However, if blogger is likely to disappear, I have to consider moving all my posts gradually, in order to have time to do so.

I hope that with the new takeover, some new ideas will roll out. Come March. Only one month away. Time to copy and update some earlier posts onto a webpage - or Facebook.

Would you be a Google Local Guide? I signed up, wrote up a hotel and condo, then checked how guides differ from blogs

Why did I sign up?
I am qualified to do so in an area where I live.
On many websites more qualified people are ahead of you.
It gives me visibility and credibility.

I often think of joining wikipedia. I used to write for encyclopaedias. It involves a lot of work and fact checking.

Signing up was easy. Since Google already knows me. I am already on Google, so it wasn't a case of yet another organization wanting to mine my information.

What is interesting is the guidelines on what you can show which is of interest to other people. For example:
1 Parking places for the handicapped, slopes for wheelchairs and suitcases and useful points of access.
2 Child-friendly places. Pet-friendly locations.
3 Food for those on diets.

I had written about two places I know well. First I wrote about the Sheraton Towers Hotel, which is open to the public.

Sheraton Towers Hotel, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Then I saw Cashew Heights Condo was listed. On my travel blog I would not mention a condo, except the parts you can see from the road. I might mention what you can expect if you go to live in another country or stay there with family.

Why would Google include an office block or condo? On second thoughts, you might be one of the thousands who work in the building. You might deliver to it. You might be thinking of working there, renting a room there, buying there.

The style of life for workers and residents might influence whether you take a job in that city or street.

You might just be curious. What's inside that building? Somebody I know works there or lives there - what is it like?

Cashew Heights Condo, Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

I said of Cashew Heights:

This complex is beautifully landscaped with fish ponds and a series of blocks with restful curves in mock art deco style surround the central swimming pool. Delightful palm trees and coconut trees and cashew nut trees are in the centre.

The huge swimming pool has a spa bath at one end. Two or more swimming instructors give swimming lessons to children. A separate children's pool has a slide and fountains.

The restaurant is under renovation (late 2018). Se A small shop provides milk and other useful items.

The tennis courts and two small gyms are well used. The gym is crowded on Sunday. If you want to use a piece of equipment, go there at lunch time.

Residents are friendly.

A pleasant path in a series of s shapes winds down to the lower gate near the station passing trees labelled with plaques and a couple of wildlife plaques on trees, animals and birds - like a miniature Botanic Gardens.

Like most condos in Singapore, tight security. If you have a friend who lives there, make sure to see the fish ponds and foliage.

After I read the guidelines, I noticed several ways I could make the text more useful, as well as adding pictures.

I could photograph the ramps in the condo's apartment blocks. I could show the visitor parking areas you must use to avoid being fined for parking in the resident's' numbered places. The complex is huge. I could photograph the exit gates and say which gate you need for which bus stops and train stations. I could show the outoodr exercise machine area.

A useful guide is not the same as a fun-to-read guide. A blog has to be more of an entertainment, more personal. A google guide has to be factual and practical.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Luxury Travel For Less, Website Blips, Special Offers: Travel Blog Challenges

Problem
My blog includes every interesting and useful piece of travel information I come across which will entertain and inform me and you. It doubles as a record of my travels, a plan for a return trip, and a blog to keep me in the public eye as a journalist.

I want to increase my readers. How will you find me. How do I increase my f i n d a b i l i t y? I just made up that word. The spell checker keeps changing it back, with a time delay so that I correct it but the change recurs later. The technical jargon for what I have called f i n d a b i l i t y is search engine optimisation, abbreviated to SEO. My son has an SEO business and won an award. On his advice, I have made changes and focus and I am going to reveal how that affects me and you.

Popular People and Brand Names
I have to disregard all my training. As an independent journalist, I would act like the BBC, and be independent, not influenced by any commercial consideration. Now, to be more popular, instead of cutting out brand names and introduction generic terms, I should introduce references to famous people, alive and dead, and current events.

Wearing Advertising, Slogans and PR, Popularity and Fashion
I can see that over the decades things have changed. Nowadays, if you give a shameless plug, like Graham Norton on TV, or Jonathan Ross, you just grin and say, "I shall give a shameless plug!"

 In the 1960s, the only people showing slogans in public were weirdos marching up and down high streets (in the USA you say main streets) trying to persuade busy shoppers that 'the end is nigh'. Now everybody competes to have amusing slogans across their chest and back. Tee-shirts are worn by everybody, pretty PR girls, not just window cleaners.

Who Is Reading What Where?
My website's editing page gives me lists of statistics on the countries where I have readers for the day, the week and the year, and now, it's easy for me to see what's going on.

What's New To You?
All this is not new to me. The trouble with relaying knowledge is that as soon as you know something, it seems obvious and not newsworthy. I have to think as a reader, like a teacher of English to pupils who are either beginners, intermediate or advanced. The same goes for travel writing.

Many or Few Readers, Rich Or Poor?
My instinct is to look for more readers. I remember going to PR events when I would be greeted warmly by a PR lady. After five minutes, she looks over my shoulder and sees somebody of more urgent interest. He's from a national newspaper with more than a million readers. She has to rush over and greet him. Yes, of course I can't hog her attention all evening. But he has a million readers. I remember thinking that the last time a million readers read my name was when Kay Boyle recommended my book on Etiquette For Every Occasion in her column at the back of the TV Times. It was my success story for the week. I thought, 'if only I could have a million readers every day!'

Providing New Information
Sometimes I re-read my post and think, but everybody knows this. Do I need to say that Bucharest is the capital of Romania? Everybody living there knows that.

But when I re-read my article and realise that I have left it out, I remember that before I went to Romania I did not know the capital. So I have to introduce the fact subtly. For example I could write something like, 'More flight' or 'fewer' flights' go to the capital, but/and Bucharest also has many ... If you do arrive in Bucharest on the evening flight, head over to the restaurant district ...

Every sentence involves another five minutes of research. How many flights a day? Is there a night flight? Is there an accent on the name of the city or restaurant?

Accuracy
I also have to consider carefully what I say about prices so as not to mislead or raise hopes. I need to make it clear to the reader what they are getting for their money. As a reminder to myself, and for the reader for help and credibility, and for legal reasons, I should show if a price does not include sales tax, VAT, service charges and other extras.

Today I have a brochure from John Lewis Finance Team. It says 'Gifts For Them Mean Vouchers For you.' Then, "Apply for a Partnership Card and receive £20".

I remember debating that with the statistician in the family. What does 18.9% APR representative variable mean?  Would the amount I paid on interest offset the £20 gain? Who is going to pay the bill in the family and would they pay off the card in time to avoid charges?

Do I need to analyse it? Or can I just say, check out this offer and see if it suits you?

Newsletters And Personal Details
The title of my new blog Luxury for Less, tells the reader what to expect and also helps me focus. I want to avoid too much personal information.

However, I could add a newsletter. What do you do if there's no worldwide news? A newsletter can be chattier and more personal. A newsletter enables me to be more like Facebook. I could tell the world if had to shorten my posts because I fell ill, or went to an exhibition.

I usually get bored if I read a newsletter all about the writer's dog when I was looking for information on buying bargains (not bargains for dogs). Yet I can see that a whole load of people (Americans say bunch of people) have replied. So, I plan to start a newsletter.

Time Differences Around The World
Time is another factor. On Facebook I was aware that if I start work at 9 am in London but don't open Facebook until lunch time, the birthday greetings I send to friends in Singapore will not arrive until the day is over. So I adapted my birthday message to good wishes for the whole year.

Americans are west of England; when I am in America, the UK is east. It's like 'the far east' from the UK'. If I am writing in the UK, if I write a blog post at midnight in the UK it will reach early risers in the USA. If I want to be really precise, I must remember that the USA has a time difference between west coast, mountain time, east coast time.

Time-based Greetings
The fashion is to start emails to people in the same country with Good Morning. This solves your problem if they have long names you have forgotten, or too long to write, or type, or if you are not sure whether to address them by first name or more formally. However, that won't work on a website being read around the world.

If you watch international broadcasts of worldwide events such as the Eurovision Song Contest or the Olympics, you will see that the well briefed commentators will begin by greeting watchers according to the time of day. They say, "Good morning to everybody in  ... (such and such a country) and good afternoon if you are watching from ...'.

Pleasing Readers In Different Countries
A reference to Americanisms will increase my American readership. A reference to buying a Russian language learning system, or the delights of the Moscow's underground stations increases readers in Russia. Stories about Ukraine or Romania also increase readership in Russia or adjacent countries. Stories about Rome, the leaning tower of Pisa, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and learning Italian and balloon flights in Tuscany and truffles in Umbrian restaurants will increase readers in Italy.

Website Names
Blogger dot com's basic blog does not look as professional as a dedicated website. I buy a website name.  I go through my blogs and select subjects.

Going Live! When?
We put up our website but transfer it. The new site doesn't work. We can edit but the public cannot read it. We confer at midnight but have to wait until the working day starts to contact the websites support team.

Oops!
I get a lot of offers from major clothing catalogue companies as well as business start ups. I ignore an offer or miss an offer, then a day later in comes another offer. They say, 'Oops - a lot of people did not get our offer yesterday, so we are extending it by another 24 hours. Don't worry if you missed it, to compensate you and for those who wrote in saying you could not reply in time because you were on holiday we are extending it all week'.

I used to think, what is this. Is it a marketing ploy.

No, says my son. These blips happen all the time, in the top companies and experienced teams as well as newcomers to the business world. Every new venture on the internet is likely to encounter delays and broken links, mis-typing, hundreds of things which can go wrong. Most of them are double checked and fixed but with dozens of businesses contacting you, some of them are bound to have teething problems. That's life.

So, now you know.

Buying The Name Luxury Travel For Less
Why luxury travel for less? It is alliterative. The dot com was already gone, sold to somebody else. So I grabbed the UK version.

The Reduced Cost of A Website
A week later the website price was reduced. Why? I don't know. The prices of many things nowadays go up and down. If we had watched and waited - and risked losing out to some other buyer, we could have bought the domain name (website name) for less. We consoled ourselves with the thought that the extra we paid meant we had had another week to get started earlier.

Why Luxury?
I love five star hotels and gourmet meals and meeting, greeting, glimpsing famous people.If I can't go there, I like to read about them. To find out what I am missing. To live vicariously. To take a look. Do you? Most people do. The word luxury covers that.

Do I want fewer big-spending readers or many more bargain hunters? If you don't think you can achieve the huge readership, then go for the small, select readership. If you as a writer, a reader, or advertiser, want to network or sell to the people who are selling or buying in the upper end of the market, you are more interested in reaching 2,000 high spenders than two million low spenders.

Why Less?
But I also like the countryside, being anonymous, being with ordinary people. I like to splurge for a celebration, a birthday, a wedding anniversary.

But I love a bargain, which enables me to get more for my money, or not feel so guilty about what I have spent. The word less covers that. Less money.

Brides Magazine
When I first started writing for Brides magazine, UK, the then editor, a level, efficient lady called Sandra Boler, told to end with suggestions for three hotels, one in each price bracket, 5 star, 3 star and 1 star. That way every bride, every reader, should find something of interest. I have that in mind when writing for you.

Hotels, restaurants and consumers know that people spend more at Christmas and economise in January. That's when the hotels and restaurants are offering bargain. To tempt the richer and the poorer, appeal to everybody.

Now you know. Watch out for my new website and blog, Luxury Travel For Less (co.uk), written with your interests in mind, coming soon.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

French and French Canadian words for bloggers, and readers of blogs and French Blogs

Problem
What is the French word for blog, blogger and other technical terms?

Story
I signed up for Google Adsence, which I must admit has not yet made me any money. However, it has proved to be a useful exercise in opening doors to the internet and expanding my ambitions in running a blog in another language.

The system asked me if I wanted my post to be translated into another language, and run ads relevant to readers of that language. I picked French, and Spanish, and German.

I then started receiving emails in French, Spanish and German, about how to sign up. This was a time-consuming challenge.

ENGLISH - FRENCH
blog - un blogue (French Canadian) un blog (French)
blogger - blogueur

FRENCH - ENGLISH
un Blog (French) - blog (English)
(un) blogue (French Canadian) - blog
blogueur - blogger

Tips
https://offqc.com/2013/05/09/clear-up-doubts-about-words-related-to-blogging-in-french-602/ (A French Canadian website from Quebec)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:French_idioms
https://www.duolingo.com/comment/194911/Interesting-blogs-or-sites-to-read-in-French
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-french/blog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxjMjDHIkjc (On writing a blog to make money)

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, blogger, teacher of English and other languages.

How To Practise the French Language (or any language)

Problem
How do you keep up a foreign language. (In my case French.)

Answers
1 THINK IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE
As you look up from your desk, or around you on a bus or train or plane, describe the scene in the language you need to practise.

2 READ LABELS
Read the labels on goods and food. When you see the foreign language, read it aloud, slowly then faster.

3 SPEAK FRENCH TO ACQUAINTANCES
When you speak to friends and strangers, tell them that you speak French (or other languages). If they are a native speaker or speak that language, immediately start speaking in that language.

4 KEEP A LANGUAGE NOTEBOOK
Do what I did to expand my vocabulary when I was learning French at grammar school for A level. I bought a small notebook. I folded the pages in half vertically. On the left I headed the column English. The right hand column was headed French.

Every time I came across a new word in French I noted it down with the translation, or I looked up the translation later. When I thought of an English word and didn't know the translation, I added the English word and looked up the translation later.

5 TRANSLATE TRAVEL PAGES & WEBSITES
Look for the French version of websites. Start with the French, and note the words you don't recognise. Then read the English. Then go back to the French. For example, when reading about the bull fight and fair in Dax, France (described in my previous posts) I went onto the website for Dax, which was in French, started reading the French, got tired, looked for the English, then went back to the French.

I thought I spoke French pretty fluently. However, I had a hard job at first telling the difference between a matador and a picador and a toreador in English, never mind the Spanish and French.

Sometimes I can't find the translation symbol on a website. I think to myself, there's no flag showing either their country or mine, but it's a tourist website, so they must have the translate symbol somewhere. I started clicking on all the tiny double letters. Eventually I found that English appeared when I clicked on the letters EN. (I had been looking for UK or GB.) After I read the English, at least skim read it to get the gist of each paragraph, I was encouraged to go back and try reading the French again.

I also read several paragraphs in Spanish, although my knowledge of Spanish is minimal, so many words are similar to English. However, some sentences made no sense because I missed just one word, the subject! Miss that one word and the ten word sentence is incomprehensible. Translate or learn that one word and you can translate a whole sentence, or have the courage to continue reading an entire paragraph.

6 START A BLOG IN FRENCH
Blogger is blogueur.

Story
This week I was in a sauna and spoke to three women who spoke English as a second language. They were initially speaking to each other in Arabic. One was from Egypt, another from Iraq, a third from Morocco. I addressed them in English and they replied in English. When I was left alone with the woman from Morocco, we discovered that we both spoke French as a second language and both wanted to keep up our French. So we started talking in French.

I told her about Duolingo. That free internet language learning website currently has about 12 other languages for speakers of English. I use Duolingo to learn languages other than English and French. But she could use Duolingo to improve her English and French or learn Spanish.

TIPS
www.duolingo.com
https://offqc.com/2013/05/09/clear-up-doubts-about-words-related-to-blogging-in-french-602/ (A French Canadian site)

Author
Angela Lansbury travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Auteur
Angela Lansbury.

I was going to translate only the signature.

Google translate gave me:
Écrivain et photographe de voyage, auteur et conférencier.

I can translate the whole post.

Here is what I got from Google Translate

Problème
Comment maintenez-vous une langue étrangère. (Dans mon cas français).

Réponses
1 PENSEZ EN LANGUE ÉTRANGÈRE
Lorsque vous regardez de votre bureau, ou autour de vous sur un bus, un train ou un avion, décrivez la scène dans la langue que vous devez pratiquer.

2 LIRE LES ETIQUETTES
Lisez les étiquettes sur les produits et les aliments. Lorsque vous voyez la langue étrangère, lisez-la à haute voix, lentement et plus vite.

3 FALER LE FRANÇAIS À DES ACQUISTIVITÉS
Lorsque vous parlez à des amis et à des étrangers, dites-leur que vous parlez français (ou d'autres langues). S'ils sont un locuteur natif ou parlent cette langue, commencez immédiatement à parler dans cette langue.

Why Have Photos Disappeared From My Blog?

Problem
Photos are not loading onto my blog on blogger.com . Why.

Answer
I am getting a pop up message saying I have exceeded my photo allowance, not just on blogger.com but on Google.

Story
I thought this might be a scam. Before paying anybody anything on line, I check with family and friends, and on the internet. My family assured me that this request was genuine. Basically, it's like everything else on line. You are offered a certain amount of free usage. They hope that you will become hooked and eventually want to, or be forced to, pay more for greater use of the service.

You might take the view that you will do everything to avoid making the leap and start again elsewhere.

Or, you might take the view that you are getting great value from the service. If you are running a business, the cost is coming off against tax.

For me, the next problem is payment. Which credit cards and which password. You may have to wait some time until I sort this out.

Tips
First check with colleagues whether the person demanding money is genuine.
Clear clutter so you are not paying for websites you no longer need.
Then get your business credit cards and passwords sorted so when and if you decide to pay you are ready.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, photographer, author and speaker.

Should you and I update posts?

Problem
You find more material to add to a post. Do you update your old post or write a new one?

Answer
I just updated my post on a website adding with the words UPDATE that a restaurant (B and K) which had a one star rating now had a five star rating (the top number for hygiene etc) because it would be unfair to them if somebody saw the previous post and did not know about the later one.

You can't update every post. There isn't time. You may forget - unless you do a search of your own blog. You might want to do an end of the year update, places closed down, new places, change of ratings. I think you should add an update at the end of an old post if you can find it and have the time in these circumstances:

To protect the people mentioned in a post, their associated businesses, customers, families and friends, but also to help your readers, I or you may wish to update or delete a post if:

1 A restaurant rating goes up or down in either Michelin or hygiene.
2 If a restaurant closes down. If it moves. If the menu has changed.
3 If somebody dies.
4 A person convicted of a crime wins an appeal or the circumstances are disputed or the sentence has been spent and you (are legally or morally obliged to no longer mention it) but you cannot delete the old post.

I often go back to add an address or website to a post. If that's all, I might add an update to everybody to share that I have added some websites. To send out a share and make them read again the next day is annoying, so I try to add more than one website. I find I am typing a whole new paragraph, I copy it and cut it and write a new post.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and editor.

Should I divide this blog into two: languages and food, or even three?

A marketing expert in my family says that my blog should have more focus. I should have one set of posts on language, another on food and wine, another on places to visit. Then readers with particular interests would know where to look regularly and could link from one post to the next.

But I already have half a dozen blogs. i focus on this one which gets more readers.

What do you think? Which blog would you read? Would you follow any of them if i did a blog with my focus on a daily basis?

Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author, speaker, teacher of English (also English as a second language).

PS
Meanwhile, I'll start another blog just on language and copy all my language posts together so they are all in one place, which will help me when I am learning a language or looking for sources and sites, and will also help you.

PPS
I just wrote my first post on my languages blog.

Go to:
http://translateforfun.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/translate-for-fun-hotel-de-ville

Why your travel video won't upload to your blog

After uploading a video to your blog it is a good idea to go to view and see what your audience is seeing. I loaded up a video and no video displayed, just an icon for a video but when you clocked on it nothing happened.

With the help of a friend, I looked at the HTML (text coding which tells you what is happening in detail). This simply confirmed what we already knew, that no video was showing, just the logo for click here.

I then remembered what had happened once before and realised my mistake. My photos and videos are all stored in one place when downloaded to my laptop from my mobile phone. The photos and videos all go into a photo album.

However, if you look at the top of the blogger editing page, you see two symbols, one for uploading photos and one for uploading videos. I had clicked on photos, then opened my laptop photo section and clicked on choose on the video.

So I went to edit blog post and deleted the photo of the click for video symbol not linked to anything.

Then I went into the blog post and clicked on the video symbol. You have to wait a while for the video to load up. I didn't dare to interrupt it.

However, I was too impatient to wait. So I opened file open, new window, to write this post as a reminder to myself and a help to you and others.

When I went back to edit, I clicked on update. When I went back to View, I could see the progress bar under the video symbol. I moved the slider under the video. I now have the video on the blog. Hurray!

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Uploading Photos To Your Blog and Recording Business Cards

Recording Cards On Phones
Running out of business cards at an exhibition? No problem. So long as you have one business card, get the person who needs it to take a photo with their phone.

Similarly, when you want their card and they have run out, photograph both sides of their card, then them holding the card. That way you can put the face to the name later.

Loading Photos To Blogs
I've found a new way to upload business cards. Take a photo on your phone. Email it to yourself. Move on your laptop later into photos. Then upload to your blog.

Or upload to a blog from your phone. Just find time to do it. You may need to check you have your blog's ap loaded onto your phone.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Do you trust reviews?

I often go to TripAdvisor because it offers a range of comments. Also you can find information in one column which is scattered over numerous pages on the company's own website.
 Great to have a forum on the Daily Mail allowing for lots of comments on parking charges. Yes, I do think parking charges are highly relevant to what you remember about an attraction.
  That's what I look for, on any site, comments on charges, service and the basics of what you actually see. So many websites say merely, a huge variety of historical items. That's why my reviews tend to focus one one or two items you can actually see.
 On TripAdvisor I read a section of views, the five star and one star. Often I visit a restaurant regardless. And yes, I would like to know about how the place was under previous ownership. It might be opened up by the brother of the previous owner, or the manager who has bought the place from the retiring owner. I want to know whether it is just as good as last time I went when it was under the old owners. I want to know whether the new owners have improved a place my family refuse to visit because they did not enjoy it under the old owners. If the place has stayed the same, I want to see my last review, so I can recall that parking is difficult, or you need a token for parking, and the recent reviews may not yet have commented.
   As a regular reviewer I also use websites as a way of recording my life history. If I want to remember the name of the coffee bar we went to this time last year when we visited the Edinburgh festival, I can find it in my history. If the old reviews are removed, my own reviews and family photos of our birthday party are gone forever. I would be better off recording my views on a blog. Or printing a book of my blog for my own records.
   If somebody moans about the long wait at a venue that may be true and relevant to those in a hurry. But if I want to spend all evening at a stately home restaurant on my birthday then I can judge whether the long wait was important.
   If somebody complains about the price, but your boss is paying, then you need not worry about the price. If the review is out of date, but the broken item was broken two years ago and is still not repaired, you know the place is not well maintained.

For more on the debate:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132937/TripAdvisor-forced-apologise-deleting-negative-reviews-country-house-estate-employees-asked-to.html#comments 

Angela Lansbury B A Hons, author, travel writer, photographer, speaker.

Who reads this blog, any blog, popular blogs?

Every day I watch the number of readers of my blog and try to work out what are the popular subjects. This month Halloween spider cake, although it's in a local suburban UK shop, got more viewers than top restaurants in central London.

American Readers
I view my readership stats provided by the site and compare yesterday versus today. I know that most of my readers are in the USA. Presumably simply because there are more English speaking computer owners there than anywhere else in the world.

London as A Topic
 If I write about London, and I am a Londoner, they may be Americans planning a trip to London, or interested in London, or fondly reminiscing, or armchair travelling.

Isolated Small Areas
I expect to get a surge in Singapore readers when I write about Singapore, but I don't. I puzzle over a lone reader in the Ukraine or Russia. Is that somebody in a hotel on a business trip? Or an isolated traveller? Someobdy stuck, unable to travel, in a war zone? Or a prisoner in solitary confinement seeing me as a link with the far off world? (As a creative writer and author I have to constantly fight down the urge to write a short story about what I imagine every other sentence I write.)

Time Travel
I look at the time difference. Oddly enough my computer says 1.50 A.M. when it's 8.51 in the morning in the UK.

Top Subjects
If you take magazines, years ago IPC, when I was working there, did a survey and found that the top subjects were Cookery, Gardening, and Fishing. That might explain the popularity of the spider cake post.

Top Blogs
How do you get more readers? By being different? Or copying the leaders?

Somebody has analysed the top blogs. The average can be the mean or the mode, the typical reader, or most common readers, or simply the middle point in the range.

Here's a guide to readers of the top blogs.
http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/03/01/blog-readership-demographics-2013/