Mrs Paisley

It's a fair cop, guv, you've got me bang to rights: this is another stupid post occasioned by looking at my log files. It's not as if I don't have anything better to do, but sometimes... well, anyway. There can be no justification, so I shan't even bother trying -- but at least this should be marginally more fun than the dreary outpouring of existential doom and despair that might otherwise have occupied this space.

So: rather implausibly there seem to have been two visits lately by people googling "dana paisley". Now this can't be a very common search term, and -- as you'd see from the above link if you could be bothered (which I can't in good faith recommend) -- this entry, on which Mrs Paisley made a rare appearance, doesn't crop up until the fifth page of results from such a search. So two hits in close succession can hardly be a coincidence.

For the sake of context, Mrs Paisley is a character Dan and I spontaneously invented one evening at Dan's place in Haggerston after having discovered the online version of the Guardian's Notes and Queries section, a treasure trove of useless information and bad jokes that proves once and for all (with apologies to Alastair, who's been subjected to this quote already this week) Mr Garrison's assertion that "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people."

Somewhat the worse for the demon drink, the pair of us took exception to the drearily etymological first answer to this question and decided to make up a contrastingly ludicrous one of our own. Obviously, our respondent had to be a suitably provincial Women's Institute sort of character, but internet answers needed to be accompanied by a valid email address, and since Dan's was dan-p@whatever, we wound up basing her name on a rather unconvincing corruption of his.

To the best of my knowledge, Mrs Paisley has kept very much to herself since then -- she is notorious in the environs of Skegness and Mablethorpe for her reclusive ways -- and her deigning to comment here must be considered quite an honour. I am, clearly, very proud to have hosted this manifestation, but the Google hits are still pretty bloody implausible.

So which of you was it, eh? Someone must know...
Posted by matt at November 5, 2003 01:10 AM