Water levels on the River Wye at Ross were high on Wednesday 9th and Thursday 10th November following heavy rain over a period of two nights. I have heard of no buildings flooding seriously, although the photographs below do show the Rowing Club under water.

All in all, I think the excess water this time just made for scenic views and gave the ducks and swans a greater area in which to swim.

I don't often show my badly failed shots but have included the bottom photograph because I thought it was funny. Not all young birds like to be photographed and this one must have been having a particularly bad hair day or something. As you can see by the fuzziness of the shot - I tried to remain calm and catch a close up but when she started to attack I jumped.

There is a matter which has been puzzling me for over five years now - not overly bothering me, simply one of those things that, every month whilst checking my web site visitor figures I think, 'I must find out the reason for that!'

When I look at my server log, I can see the search strings which people type into the various engines before arriving at Wyenot.com, e.g.. 'ross on wye'. The top strings are always quite obvious ones such as, 'ross on wye, wye valley, wye valley news' etc. but there is just one string which has been appearing in the top ten most popular for five years now and which has puzzled me since the very beginning. It is a 'Google' search, apparently for the letter 'b' - all by itself.

I don't know if it because I ran out of tea and drank a mug of coffee this morning (horrible French idea - I believe they eat slugs, snails and frog's legs too) and the different caffeine levels made my brain more alert but somehow, I twigged it today - and without even having to think too hard.

People are not searching for a solitary letter 'b'. They are searching for 'b&b' and my server log is ignoring both the ampersand and the second 'b' when reporting the search string.

Oh well - they do say you learn something new every day!

A few people have recently suggested to me, 'Why don't you put a community message board on Wyenot.com?'

Well here's the answer. I did. Back in the halcyon days of the summer of 2001 I added a community message board which people could fill in without my having to edit what they wrote and this is where the problems began. People could write what the wished, anonymously, and they did. It is amazing what people will write if they think they are doing so anonymously.

The board was getting very full of people trying to trace one particular business in town, with which I had no connection but against which it seemed the world and his wife held a grudge. Whether their feelings about this business were valid or not, I have no idea but I did not wish to become involved and this was one of the reasons I removed it. The other was that I had to consider costs and so hosted it on an American web server, which suddenly began to shove pop-up ads for casinos onto the screens of viewers and I found this very tacky.

Thinking back to that 'community message board;' one of the very first comments somebody typed was: 'I am offended because you have made no mention of lesbians on your web site!' (or words to that effect.)

I may not particularly like coffee but I am not in the least bit racist. I will cover any topic (excluding politics) on Wyenot.com or Wyenot News, providing it has some local relevance. The reason I had not covered the topic of 'lesbians' is because I know nothing about the Lesbia - other than that I believe the people who live there are a particularly happy crowd. Should something happen there which is of genuine newsworthy relevance to Ross-on-Wye, I will willingly visit and take a photo for Wyenot News - providing somebody else pays the air fare.

The principles of modern philosophy,
Were postulated by Descartes;
Discarding everything he wasn't certain of,
He said 'I THINK THEREFORE I AM A RHUBARB TART!'
(Cogito ergo sum amarus rheum.)

Don't Forget

The Potters Bar

Saturday 26th November!

PLEASE CLICK THE TICKET BELOW FOR A VERSION TO PRINT OR EMAIL TO ANY OLD POTTERS BAR FREQUENTERS YOU KNOW!