And it’s a BIG çok teşekkürler* to the Google Blogger Team…

 

So, on Wednesday night, around midnight, I was thinking it was about time to shut down the computer and go to bed, but before so doing I clicked on to Statcounter, which measures blog traffic,  to look at my blog statistics.

And there was something really weird going on.

According to Statcounter, instead of a couple of dozen people looking at the blog  - which, as I hadn’t put up a new post for a couple of weeks, was what I was expecting – something like 900 people had looked at the blog on Wednesday, mostly in the preceding hour, something which seemed inherently unlikely.

‘Oh, pfft', ' I thought, assuming that  Statcounter had somehow gone haywire,  and was fabricating hundreds of fictitious hits on the blog in some kind of Crazed Out- of-Control Software Fictitious Blog Hit Binge. But then I looked more closely at all these ‘fictitious’ visitors, and saw that they were coming from Google Blogger, and in particular the Blogger ‘Blogs of Note’ page.

So I followed the link back and found,  to my complete astonishment, that the very lovely people in the  Google Blogger team, at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California

- which I have always imagined to be some kind of mountain top redoubt with a turreted log cabin fortress, circling eagles and panoramic views over range after range of snow-covered mountains, receding into the far distant blue horizons -

had,  for reasons best known to themselves, chosen the Camel Barn Library as their Blog of Note  of the day for Wednesday, 13th October, 2010, a date which shall now be forever engraved on my heart. As a result of the link to the blog being posted on the Blogs of Note page, over the next 24 hours there were more than 6,000 hits on the Camel Barn Library, something which left me quite stupefied with amazement, and  has also led to a big increase in email and feed subscriptions, and comments and emails about the blog.

And this has made me exceedingly happy.

The criteria for choosing the Blogs of Note seem to be amusingly random, and The Camel Barn Library was probably selected less for its sterling literary qualities and informative content than for its very odd name, but I can live with that.

The main purpose of writing this blog is to share with people elsewhere in the world something of Turkey, the extraordinarily beautiful  and endlessly interesting country in which I am living, and its fascinating history and culture.  I knew very little about either the modern country of Turkey or the history of Asia Minor before I came to live here, a lack of knowledge which is very common in the West, even amongst people who regard themselves as well informed about the world . Such ignorance is something that should be remedied, given both the huge cultural importance of the many civilisations which have previously existed here in Asia Minor, and the growing economic and political importance of Turkey in the world today. The Camel Barn Library is intended to contribute, in however small a way, to achieving that aim.

When you start writing a blog – something I have never done before – it takes a while for the readership to build up, and since I haven’t been writing it for very long, and am doing so very slowly, I was more than happy that anyone was reading it at all. It had been becoming clear to me, however, from earlier responses to the blog, that there are plenty of people out there who are interested in the topics covered by the Camel Barn Library, and are eager to learn more about Turkey and its culture and history, just as I am. The problem was how to reach more of them, but I wasn’t at all sure how one went about doing that, other than relying on word of mouth.

However, being chosen as a ‘Blog of Note’ has suddenly enabled me to reach a much, much wider audience with the Camel Barn Library, which is wonderful. Of course, this is a fairly specialised area of interest, and for lots of the new visitors, it simply won’t be their thing; however,  it looks as if there will be quite a few new readers who are here to stay, and for that I would like to thank you, Google Blogger Team, very much indeed.

As would my dog Freddie (pictured below playing it cool  while a small but determined admirer tries to lick his nether regions) -

 

- who has gained a number of new fans in the last couple of days, much to his delight. He is woofing  ‘çok teşekkürler’, and wagging his tail. Be thankful that you are barricaded in your mountain-top eyrie, Google Blogger Team; were you not, he would be jumping up and licking your faces enthusiastically to show his gratitude. Not to mention chewing your shoes. Whilst you are still wearing them. We’re going to have to do some work on the whole training thing very, very soon.

So,  thanks again to the Google Blogger Team, and a very warm welcome to new readers: I hope you will stay around, as there is a lot more to come, not least the dénouement of the search for the Paraschos house, which will, all being well, be posted very shortly.

Hoş geldiniz!  Welcome!

 

 

*not nearly as rude as it looks: it means ‘Thank you very much’ in Turkish.