Pourquoi?

Blog statistics are a mysterious beast. Please don't run away, but I can see who's visiting, or rather what city you live in, and have come to recognise my regular lurkers. You're very welcome here! Please keep coming! If you ever feel like de-lurking, don't hold back - I would love to be able to say, "Oh look, [insert name here] has called in", instead of nodding and thinking, "Ah, Mountain View, CA", or "Bonjour, Paris". Don't be shy!

Besides the select few of you who come here directly, many more arrive as the result of a search for what is often something very esoteric and even exotic. This is where you're expecting to read a funny list of wild and crazy search terms, and I wish I'd thought to record the more eyebrow-raising ones, but sorry, I haven't done that (though I will from now on). I do know what the more common ones are though, because Blogger keeps them for me. They're pretty dull and predictable: the Emirates A380 Review is far and away the most-searched and most-read (which teaches me that I should go for the dull titles if I want lots of traffic). Second-most read post, though, is Vive la France, which is curious. The most-common search term is 'French flag' which to me suggests hundreds of schoolchildren with projects on the go, but perhaps not. I imagine they're stealing this image of the flag, which would be sort of annoying, since flags are very capricious things to photograph.

But why so many people typing in 'Vive la France'? I hope it's not because they're wanting a translation, quelle horreur. And why so many in the last couple of days? There's been a sudden spike, people! Fifteen in the last day and a bit alone! What's going on there? What's France up to that's not making it into the news here? Surely the dreadful Alpes murders aren't prompting it? It's very intriguing. Anyway, I hope they're grateful, all 2015* of them, having got here to receive a small dose of New Zealand history and an introduction to Akaroa. Which is doing very well out of the earthquakes, by the way: instead of cruise liners mooring at Lyttelton, which was very shaken, they've been calling into Akaroa for a little taste of France. A quelque chose malheur est bon! And speaking of tastes of France, there's a mille feuilles in the kitchen calling to me, that's going to be almost as good as the one I bought in Tain-l'Hermitage...

* UPDATE: Make that 2107 of them, with 627 'French flag' searches (plus one 'do fish eggs stick on you?')