March

March has been a very strange month. For most people, this would be a reference to the weather – colder than January and the coldest since whenever. But I was thinking more about what has been happening on my blog.

Readership of the blog has been rising fairly steadily for a while and hit a record in February. But in March there was a massive increase in page hits, which cleared over 1,000 for the month. I'm a bit sceptical about Blogger’s figures and this number must include quite a lot of robots and things like some of my own page views, even though it's not supposed to record those. But it certainly does seem that the blog is becoming much more popular. The thing is, I have absolutely no idea why. I do get some comments here, but not many, so I'm really flying blind when it comes to guessing what attracts people to read it.

March posts included some stuff about contemporary events in Borneo, and a series of posts about S A Meade and her novel ‘Lord of Endersley’. There was an item about the Army Museum and the new exhibit relating to Cawnpore and a mention of Public LendingRight. There was also one post about my own novel, because, after all, generating interest in my books is supposed to be what the blog is about.

The posts about Borneo do seem to have generated quite a bit of interest, although that can't explain all of my increased readership, because there were no posts on that in February, even though the upward trend seems to have started then. What we had in February, purely as a piece of self-indulgence, was a series of articles about dancing tango in Buenos Aires. I'm delighted that people enjoyed these, but a bit surprised at how popular they seem to have been. Perhaps I should write a book about tango.

Whatever is encouraging you to read this, I'm glad you're here. I hope you continue to enjoy it. If you write something in the comments, I'd be grateful, and it makes it easier for me to write the sort of things you want to see.