This blog is 15 years old today and is becoming quite an old gentleman in blog terms. I can't remember why I started blogging on 16 August 2005, but I did. That was before Facebook and Twitter really took off and, in many ways, replaced blogging with their approach to 'micro-blogging' and updates. A lot of blogs started closing down in the early teens but I kept mine going - no idea why, really. Fifteen years on and I'm still doing it. Not with the same frequency as in the early days but it's still happening.
The Plastic Bag is named after an X-Ray Spex song from 1978 written by the great Poly Styrene. She sang, 'My mind is like a plastic bag that corresponds to all those ads, it sucks in all the rubbish that is fed in through by ear...' and that seemed so right at the time. It still does. There's never been a theme to the blog other than it's all about me in one way or another, a right mix-up of things: thoughts on what's going on in the world, reviews of plays, comments on records, art exhibitions, holidays, posting videos of things I like, all sorts really.
Some people still look at it and read posts, not in the numbers that used to but I don't mind. Blogger tells me the USA is my main audience closely followed by UK readers and then a long way behind is Germany.
These stats aren't really meaningful over the life of the blog since I changed the address where it's hosted a few years ago and lost that history of usage but I suspect these figures are reasonably indicative of use.
I don't have any fancy analytics on the blog so can only go by what Blogger tells me, and it tells me that these are the most read entries in the blog:
'Para-Umbilical Hernia' on 4 January 2010 with 2425 pageviews
'Matilda The Musical' on 19 January 2012 with 2168 pageviews
'Blondie at the O2' on 1 July 2010 with 2049 pageviews
Followed by blogs about seeing Kate Bush live in concert in 2014, a Poem on the Underground from 2010, a TV programme about spices by Kate Humble from 2011, and seeing both Amanda Palmer and Viv Albertine in 2013. A mix of this and that, just like a lot of things tumbling round in a plastic bag should be.
Will the Plastic Bag continue? Who knows? But 15 years isn't bad at all.
The Plastic Bag is named after an X-Ray Spex song from 1978 written by the great Poly Styrene. She sang, 'My mind is like a plastic bag that corresponds to all those ads, it sucks in all the rubbish that is fed in through by ear...' and that seemed so right at the time. It still does. There's never been a theme to the blog other than it's all about me in one way or another, a right mix-up of things: thoughts on what's going on in the world, reviews of plays, comments on records, art exhibitions, holidays, posting videos of things I like, all sorts really.
Some people still look at it and read posts, not in the numbers that used to but I don't mind. Blogger tells me the USA is my main audience closely followed by UK readers and then a long way behind is Germany.
These stats aren't really meaningful over the life of the blog since I changed the address where it's hosted a few years ago and lost that history of usage but I suspect these figures are reasonably indicative of use.
I don't have any fancy analytics on the blog so can only go by what Blogger tells me, and it tells me that these are the most read entries in the blog:
'Para-Umbilical Hernia' on 4 January 2010 with 2425 pageviews
'Matilda The Musical' on 19 January 2012 with 2168 pageviews
'Blondie at the O2' on 1 July 2010 with 2049 pageviews
Followed by blogs about seeing Kate Bush live in concert in 2014, a Poem on the Underground from 2010, a TV programme about spices by Kate Humble from 2011, and seeing both Amanda Palmer and Viv Albertine in 2013. A mix of this and that, just like a lot of things tumbling round in a plastic bag should be.
Will the Plastic Bag continue? Who knows? But 15 years isn't bad at all.
