...but don't you think that this has been an uncommonly good week in the UK blogosphere? I'm wondering whether people are subconsciously being affected by a kind of back-to-school, knuckling-down-for-the-autumn mentality, which is causing them to produce their best work.

You're all so talented and lovely! Troubled Diva kisses you!

Christ. I'll be all right again by Monday, promise.

Scaryduck posts about his adopted homeland of Dorset, and sends me spinning off into a nostalgic reverie.

My late grandparents lived in Cerne Abbas, a picture-postcard-perfect village which nestles under Giant's Hill, home of that famously priapic ancient chalk carving, the Cerne Giant. Every Easter and every August, my mother, my sister and I would travel down from North Nottinghamshire to visit them; an epic journey, which would take us most of the day. Down the Fosse Way, through the Cotswolds (where we would turn off the road, stop the car, spread out our checkered blanket and eat our cheese or meat paste sandwiches), and over Salisbury Plain towards Sherborne. With no car radio to distract us, my sister and I would sing, play I-Spy, or maybe score points for the numbers of legs contained in pub names on our respective sides of the road. (I can still remember the surge of joy I felt as we passed - on MY SIDE! - a pub called The Horse & Hounds.)

Until around 1973, when the level of chalk erosion forced the National Trust to fence it off, anyone was free to clamber up the Cerne Giant. It was, of course, our favourite walk. But oh, my poor mother...



"Here's his foot! And here's his other foot! And here's his leg ... and here's his other leg. OK: you take the left leg, I'll take the right leg, and I'll see you when we reach his ... what is this bit, Mummy? I can't work it out."

"That's his tummy, darling."

"But it's got all funny lines on it..."

"No darling, that really is his tummy. Come on, quickly now..."

"I know! I know! Why don't we stop and have our picnic here for a change?"

"No darling, I don't think so. Let's climb up a bit further and sit on his face like we normally do, shall we?"

It was YEARS before I realised that the giant was sporting a big fat stiffy. YEARS! I had something of a sheltered childhood, shally we say.

The best place to view the giant from a distance is from a wide lay-by, just outside the village. Driving past this spot one lunchtime in the late 1980s, my mother noticed a large group of people, formally dressed, having a full sit-down banquet in the middle of the lay-by. They had erected a long dining table, covered it with a white linen tablecloth, and laid it with china plates, silver cutlery, wine glasses, the full works. Mystified, my mother made enquiries in the village. It turned out that this banquet was an annual event, which was well known to the locals.

Because of its manifestly priapic nature bloody great enormous penis, the Cerne Giant has always been known as a fertility symbol. As such, certain magical powers have been ascribed to it over the centuries. Indeed, legend has it that any couple who have been unable to conceive should make their way, at dead of night, to those very same funny lines on the giant's tummy - where they should commit the sacred act of conception have a shag. On the side of a hill. In the open air. Lawks! Nine months later, they will be then rewarded with a beautiful bouncing baby, courtesy of the big fella himself.

Which is precisely what the son of the Duke of Something-Or-Other (or was it the Marquis of Thingummy?) and his wife had done, a few years earlier, in a final act of desperation, having previously been told that they were unable to bear children. Ever since then, on the exact anniversary of the shag act of conception, the couple would bring their friends to this lay-by, all togged up, best china in the boot, and they would have this celebratory thanksgiving banquet together.

A few miles away in Dorchester, my grandfather presided over the Quarter Sessions in the local court house - these being the criminal trials which were eventually replaced by the County Court system. Unlike his notorious predecessor, the dreaded (and dreadful) Judge Jeffries (known in the C17th as the "hanging judge"), my grandfather never got to hand out any death sentences - much to his chagrin, I suspect. (I can just picture him with a blank handkerchief on his head, banging his gavel, and snarling "Take him down!" in his iciest tones.) A man of robustly traditional views, was my grandfather. After all, this is someone who once opined over dinner that society had been sliding downhill ever since the working classes had been granted paid holidays. Someone who refused to have a television in his house ("the dread goggle-box"), and who witheringly referred to TV quiz shows as "The Glorification of the Common Man". (On the other hand: he did have a finely tuned sly wit, and was not above affecting a provocative stance for the sake of effect. Not unlike his grandson, in that case.)

As Scaryduck reports, the name of Judge Jeffries lives on in - of all things - a rather stuffily old-school restaurant and tea-room, just opposite the Dorset county museum . On shopping trips to Dorchester, we would collect my grandfather from the members' room at the museum - where he would be sitting in an ancient leather armchair, reading The Times - and we would take luncheon together at Judge Jeffries. For me, this always felt like a major treat. For my first course, I would be solemnly presented with a glass tumbler of tomato juice, sitting on a paper doily, in the middle of a china plate. The waitress would then always ask me whether I wanted a drop of Worcester Sauce in my tomato juice. To me, this was the very height of sophistication. The main course would be plaice, chips and carrots (I didn't like peas), and for pudding - oh, joy upon joy! - I could choose a slice of gateau from the sweet trolley. For me, there was nothing quite so awesomely splendid as the Judge Jeffries sweet trolley, where everything was garnished with glacé cherries, "hundreds and thousands", or tiny little green chunks of angelica. Heaven!

Just beyond the Cerne Abbas graveyard, with the ruins of the old Norman abbey to the left, and the wooded foothills of Giant's Hill down at the far end, lies the field known as Belvoir. For reasons which I can't quite explain, but which probably have a lot to do with deeply embedded happy childhood memories, there is something magical, almost sacred, about this ground. It's where my ashes are to be scattered. The details are in my will. Bury my heart at Giant's foot!

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I never finished explaining what happened to K's television interview, did I?

We eventually found out that BBC1's Breakfast News program hadn't shown the interview after all. Although not before Buni (my media manager - and stylist-cum-personal-shopper, but that's another long overdue story) had contacted the BBC on our behalf.

(I might as well pass on the relevant info, just in case. If you have appeared on a BBC TV programme and would like to be sent a video of it, then you should e-mail contributor.access@bbc.co.uk. A charge is made for the service, but we didn't found out how much.)

According to K, there was still a possibility that he might be on BBC1 "some time between 18:00 and 19:00". I duly raced back from my early evening pint at Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem, in order to start the video at 18:00 on the dot - aware all the while that I all I was really doing was colluding with his delusions. Lead item on the national 6 o'clock news? ("And in other news: Iraq...") Yeah, right.

Needless to say, he didn't make the 6 o'clock news. Rather more disappointingly, he didn't even make the subsequent Midlands Today programme. Probably because, being nothing more (or less) than a business/science/medicine feel-good story, the item didn't present the Midlands Today editorial team with any opportunities for the sort of unctuous sentimentalisation of small-scale human suffering which is the stock in trade of local news teams the world over. (Oh dear, am I coming over all bitter again?)

K eventually discovered that his interview had in fact made it onto BBC News 24 at some unknown stage during the day. But, really darlings, who watches that?

Ooh, the excitement disappointment. K is currently holed up in his hotel room in Philadelphia - the river just outside his window - waiting for Hurricane Tropical Storm Stiff Breeze Isabel to move up from Washington DC die down to nothing. The airport's already closed experiencing delays of up to several hours returning to normal. He's supposed to be catching the overnight flight back to Manchester on Friday night/Saturday morning. This could all become awfully tiresome routine.

I've told him not to go outside without his lead-lined boots. Don't want him to end up in a tree. Or is that a tornado? I've never fully understood the difference between hurricanes and tornadoes. Hurricanes are more horizontal, and tornadoes are more centrifugal, right? Is that it? Ach, it's just a "Tropical Storm" now. Piece of piss! It has more or less been and gone, during the night. He slept right through it.

It's all too, too thrilling. Whatever!

Update: Oh, wouldn't you just know it: a Hurricane Isabel blog. Lots of pictures of fallen trees! The horror! The horror!

Do you remember when we were left a comment by a passing Estonian pop star? Well, of course you do. Possibly the high-water mark of this blog to date, that was. (*) Because we do like it when bona fide celebs pop by. Even if their celebrity only stretches as far as being Number 86 in the Estonian album chart this week (I checked).

(Fair do's, mind you. Because - lest we should ever be seduced into thinking otherwise - having a moderately well-read blog such as this is - in terms of popularity - roughly the equivalent of being Number 86 in the Estonian album chart.)

It was therefore a great pleasure to receive a friendly "hey, thanks for the gig review" e-mail last week from someone called babydaddy, who is a member of that hot new band from New York, The Scissor Sisters. That's right: they're the ones who do that marvellous discofied version of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb. As I said to babydaddy (you see how easily that phrase trips off the tongue?) - babydaddy, I said - when you're reviewing an act, it never crosses your mind that members of the act themselves might end up reading what you have written. (And as I also said to babydaddy - it's not every day that you have the Rolling Stones as your warm-up act.)

I've said it once before, and now I can say it again:
Troubled Diva - the blog that the STARS read!

(*) Needless to say, it's been all downhill since then, as you well know. I spent some time yesterday updating the "We wrote..." section with favourite postings from the past three months, and found myself having to relive the full horror of the Troubled Diva Fat Elvis Period. And let's not even talk about the humiliation of last week's popularity contest. Beaten by the Audi sodding Olympics? (**) I ask you, has it come to this?

(**) Fret not, kindly and anxious reader - I'm not that bitter. In this corner of the Blogosphere, we call this "friendly rivalry".

$1000 Wedding by Gram Parsons (from his classic Grievous Angel album) is one of my (oh, go on, shall I say it?) our (eww) absolute favourite pieces of music ever ever ever. Haunting, mournful, tender, elegiac, it gets me there, every time.

And yet, and yet...neither of us can work out exactly what the hell he's supposed to be singing about. We've pored over these lyrics on more than one occasion (OK, on two occasions), and yet - after lengthy and involved discussions - remain none the wiser.

So, how does that work, then? An intensely moving song, whose lyrics consistently refuse to add up and make sense? I guess it's all about suggestion, mood, atmosphere, and an unresolved central enigma which keeps the song fresh and compelling after many listenings.

Here are the lyrics. Can you do any better with them? If so, then do please tell me.P.S. Yes, I have seen this article, thank you for Googling. Useful, fascinating, but ultimately, it still doesn't help.

Note in particular the "I don't have a weblog" option. Because effectively, I'm measuring two things here.

1. How often do people's partners read their weblogs? In my case, the answer is "almost never" - but we're cool with that. He gets enough of me in real life as it is, without having to go onto a computer to find out even more.

(Incidentally, if you've had a partner while blogging but are single now, then feel free to change the question to "How often did your partner read your weblog?")

2. Amongst my readers, what's the percentage split between bloggers and non-bloggers? (I'm going to make a provisional guess: 80% bloggers, 20% non-bloggers.)

To make the magic work, I do need all my lovely readers to vote. Yes, that means you.

Partners and Weblogs.

How often does your partner read your weblog? Almost always. More often than not. Only from time to time. Almost never. My partner doesn't know I have a weblog. I'm single. I don't have a weblog. Current Results

Installed on my sidebar about a week ago, the Linkrack was a bit of an experiment in quick-fire linkage (as inspired firstly by little yellow different, and secondly by plasticbag.org - because one can always rip off the big boys learn from the masters). Anyway, I thought it worked quite well, so I'll be continuing with it for a while. I'll also be clearing the stack each week, and providing a permanently archived posting of the previous week's links. Here's the first one, then...

I'm sorry, but having only sixty people who LOVE ME is a bitter blow indeed. Some might even go so far as to say that it is a paltry reward for the major contribution which I have made over the years. I, of course, could not possibly comment.

My congratulations to Miss Crawford. May she enjoy her brief reign of Popularity.

As for myself, I shall return to my Art ... a concept which, I suspect, has never duly troubled Miss Crawford and her preening mob of acolytes.

(sweeps magisterially out of room, stumbling only once or twice on the way)