Ellee Seymour

The outfits were elegant and demure and deliberately understated to accommodate the renowned British reserve. But one thing stood out and disappointed me about Carla Sarkozy’s carefully planned wardrobe during her visit to the UK last week -where were the heels?

I only started wearing flatties after I began to carry babies around on my hips. Up until then, I always wore the right colour killer heel with every outfit. Even when cycling around Cambridge on journalistic assignments. And I certainly still do when the occasion demands. I would certainly never dream of attending a formal evening in dull flatties. I own dozens of gorgeous stilettos in every colour you can imagine, some more comfortable than others. These are essential accessories that complete an outfit, even more so than a handbag. And I’m afraid that’s where Carla let herself down - literally - even if her soft pumps were made by Dior.

There are occasions when a woman has to wear heels, however short her partner. How long before Carla develops the hunched shoulders that Princess Diana did during her marriage to Prince Charles who she also dwarfed? Can tall women wear heels when they marry much shorter men? I think sometimes they have to, especially if they want to look glamorous. Glamour and flatties do not go together.

*I also have a black pillbox hat I bought a few years ago, is this the start of a new fashion craze? And don’t you think her sleeves are too short on her purple coat which I read cost £2,000?

Just before Easter I was ranked at just over 19,000 by Technorati, the internet search engine which tracks every blog in the world.

In the last week, thanks to my hectic home and work schedule which resulted in light blogging, I dropped 10,000 places, but am still ranked above 30,000. Just. And my blog was ranked as high as 13,000 a year ago when I had more time to spend on it.

I really value my Technorati ranking rather than the number of readers I have because it demonstrates that bloggers are linking to me and my posts. However, I believe if you use Google Reader to peruse a favourite post, which I often do, then it does not register as a hit. So you cannot accurately know the number of your readers or where they are from. Please correct me if I am wrong.

As Wikipedia states that Technorati was indexing 112 million blogs last December, perhaps being ranked at 29,000 globally is not too bad after all. I won’t lose any sleep over it, but will try not to drop any lower, however busy I am.

Do you worry about your rankings at all? How do you assess the success of your blog?