What the...?

There are times when I give way to... vanity? Curiosity? Whatever. I quite often look... Strike that: every day I look at the total number of page views shown at the foot of that flag widget thingummy in the right-hand border of this blog. Being a modest sort of a chap generally, I didn't start jumping up and down when I noticed that the number had passed through the 15,000 mark, nor - a week or so ago - when it hit 20,000. But it did occur to me to wonder just where all those visitors had come from. (If Ruth Rendell can end a sentence in her latest book with the word "with" I reckon I can end a sentence with a preposition or a conjunction if I so wish!) So I took a look at the stats so kindly provided by Blogger. Some of the search terms people had used to come up with this blog just blew my mind so I thought to share a few.

• 5 foot wingspan bird
• fences in village in uk
• 24 - 26 - 28 - 30. menin gate 42nd
• bacon roses she wants a snack

Really!

Out of curiosity (not vanity!) I Googled "fences in village in uk" and found about 691,000 results!


I'm not a great follower of any sports team, neither football, cricket nor rugby nor any of the more esoteric sports like speedway or hockey. All the same, I do glance at the football results and cricket scores in the season to see how Brighton & Hove Albion (my local football team) and other in which I am interested have done and how Sussex and Kent (cricket) are faring.

Brighton have been doing well this season, their first since securing promotion from the 1st Division to the Championship.

(Parenthetical comment. Years ago the Football League consisted of four divisions - 1, 2, 3 and 4. Then the snooty clubs in the 1st Division broke away and declared themselves the Premier League - that's League, not Division - so Division 2 became Division 1, 3 became 2 and 4 became 3. Then Division 1 was renamed the Championship, so Division 2 became Division 1 and 3 became 2. So those clubs originally in Division 4 are now in Division 2. I wonder if they feel any better because of that?)

Albion have managed to knock Premier League Newcastle out of the FA Cup and last Sunday received their reward, playing high-flying Premier League club Liverpool. It was a high-scoring match with no fewer than seven goals, of which Brighton scored four! Unfortunately, three of those four were in their own net so Liverpool won 6 - 1. But the Albion can now claim to be record holders - for the most own goals in a cup tie!


I'm off to the hospital this afternoon. It's six months since my check up after the cancer scare of last summer and the specialist wants to see me again. I wonder what she will say when I tell her that the spray I use for my chest problem (not cancer) seems to be aggravating the arthritis? Her bedside manner is not the best so I don't expect very much in the way of sympathy.


A sign of spring? Yesterday afternoon I saw a black-headed gull in full summer plumage - the first this year. But it was only last week that I saw a small flock of redwings (winter visiting birds) in the park.