I am not quite sure how I came to be a participant of consumer surveys, though it might have been the promise of vouchers for my favorite department store. So I signed up, completed a few surveys, and quite enjoyed it. It was a fun thing to do between writing essays, cooking dinner, working, eating, watching TV and generally living. Ok so some of them were long winded but companies pay to ask us what we think of them and who am I not to take some of those rewards. I took my first voucher shortly before Christmas and spent it on a couple of presents. Then they suddenly decided they were being over generous, and I got busy and did less surveys. This week though I have had another couple of goes, one was a survey about the department stores I use and what I buy there, another was about my tissue buying habits (I kid you not). Also on the site they have a few polls and today I voted in one of those because it was about blogging. These are the results:
| Results Of The Mini-Poll | |
| Do you write or read a blog (or more than one)? | |
|---|---|
| I read a blog, but I don’t write any. | 20% |
| I write a blog, but I don’t read any apart from my own. | 2% |
| I read and write blogs. | 10% |
| I don’t read blogs or write one myself. | 69% |
This of course is not scientific and I have no idea how many people have voted. The first thing of note to me is the number of people who say they don’t read or write blogs, which would suggest that the chance of someone you know reading your blog could be reasonably small. I also wonder how long your blog would last, and who would call by if you wrote a blog but never read anyone else’s.
I guess no one will be surprised (as England is often portrayed as a wet place) that this year we have officially had our wettest summer since records began (about 300 years apparently). This in a year when experts (probably old men clutching sea weed) predicted a very hot and dry summer with water shortages and general mayhem. Instead there has been flooding, days without a sign of sunshine and a day last week when I resorted to putting on the heating. According to the Meteorological Office they judge the end of August to be the end of summer (although of course that is not official in terms of seasons), and I for one say good riddance wet and cold summer, bring in warm and dry autumn, please!
