Post 2K

We are now back from our traditional week in mid-Wales, with its usual mixed bag of weather. I'll be posting something about that soon, for sure, plus some photographs. But first...

I sometimes refer to mid-Wales as the Land the Internet Forgot. Which is not entirely fair: the fact that our favoured cottage rental has no WiFi might have something to do with that impression, after all. But the complete absence of any sort of phone signal had always been a challenge or a blessed relief, depending on the nature of your needs and your susceptibility to the pester-power of email. So it was a surprise, to say the least, to find that this year a one-bar 4G signal was frequently available indoors, occasionally swelling into an intoxicating second bar. So on 3rd April I was tempted to take a quick peek at my blog stats, and I noticed a figure that immediately made me take a screen shot.

Check it out: can you see it? No, not those sixteen disciples followers: I have no idea how they got in, as I thought I'd shut that door quite firmly (I am, after all, just a very naughty boy). And, no, not those viewing figures, either, which are surprisingly high, but almost certainly in large part the record of visits by various robots and fleeting drive-bys from people looking for camera porn. No, it was that number, near the top! That's right, you've got it: 1999 posts.

Which means that THIS is post number TWO THOUSAND.

As an instinctive contrarian, I thought it would be a suitably low-key – not to say meta – use for this anniversary post simply to mention the fact that it is an anniversary post, and leave it at that. What, you expected there would be cake? Fireworks? A specially-commissioned piece from a prominent contemporary composer? If so, I suspect you haven't been coming here for very long, have you? Or, as people like to say these days, have you met me?

TBH, this satisfyingly round number should really have been racked up a few years ago. When I started blogging in 2008 I was aiming to post something nearly every day. I kept that up for a while, but subsequently my efforts seemed to stabilise at around a dozen posts most months, with a break during the summer. Then, latterly, I started to slow the pace to about 1.5 posts every week. This was partly due to declining energy on my part (and a sense that I had started to repeat myself), but also because some regular readers were complaining that they couldn't keep up and were letting posts go by unread. Noooo! But, point taken. After all, even the likes of Marina Hyde only publishes a couple of times a week.

Anyway, there it is. Two thousand posts. Who'd have thought it? No wonder I'm feeling tired. Just think, though, if I'd put  all that effort into writing fiction I'd have completed ten utterly unpublishable novels by now... But I'm pretty sure even most published novelists don't chalk up 7593 comments, or 20,000+ reads in a single month, however illusory most of those reads might be. I'll take that. And I should offer my sincere thanks to those of you who have been stopping by to read my ramblings over the years, despite my efforts to discourage "followers" (how did they get in here?). Here's to the next thousand! (Really? You do realise you're seventy now? Ed.)