*Waves* at the Ukraine

Blogging is a wonderful thing. I feel utterly blessed that I’m able to spend time most days doing it. I put my thoughts out into the ether, and there they hang for everyone and anyone to dip into them... And I do mean anyone.

I’m waving at the Ukraine for a reason, and it is this: For about the past week, more people in the Ukraine have been reading my blog than almost anywhere else in the World.

Most of my readers come from the English speaking World. They’re from the UK, the USA, Canada and Australasia for the most part, with a smattering in Europe. I also happen to have a decent number of readers in parts of Asia, particularly China.

I know all this because there’s a nifty little World map on my statistics page. It’s divided up into countries, which begin white, and, as the blog is viewed by more and more people, the countries turn progressively darker and darker green.

I remember one night when Argentina suddenly turned a brilliant green. I was writing about Ian Rankin on the blog, so maybe he has a following in Argentina, and the whole ‘Any Publicity’ thing has got legs. Who knows?

On another occasion Cyprus suddenly turned black. Yep, in the space of a matter of minutes, 89 people clicked on the blog and, so far as I could tell, they were virtually all  Cypriots. Why? I have no idea. I hadn’t mentioned Cyprus or anything Cypriot. I hadn’t, for that matter, mentioned anything Turkish or Greek, nor had I mentioned any rivalry there might have been, or might still be between those two nations. I can only think that a dear old friend of mine who lives in Nicosia was at some sort of event and mentioned my name, and every single person she knows took out his or her smartphone and looked me up... If so, that’s kinda cool... If not... What the hell happened?

Kiev looking utterly beautiful!

Right now, the Ukraine is a very dark green spot on my World map, the darkest green, in fact. A little bit of me would love to know why. It’s true for today, and it’s true for this week, and yet that fine country is the same pale green as Russia for the month, and the all time stats put the Ukraine in the same colour bracket as the whole of Eastern Europe. 

The subjects for my blogs over the past week are various, so it can’t be that, and I haven’t mentioned that part of the World since the  last time I had a pop at Putin, which was more than a fortnight ago, and, beside Putin isn’t Ukrainian.

Perhaps they’ve just got a huge crush on Miley Cyrus, whom I wrote first this and then, tangentially, this blog about this week, or maybe they’ve got a thing about public service or Joanna Trollope or one of the other subjects I got my knickers in a twist about this week... Whatever brought them here, I hope they found what they were looking for.

It’s hard to fault being popular, so I’m going to wave at the Ukraine and try to enjoy the attention while it lasts. 

I wonder who’ll be up next.