Rioting is clearly not a good thing. Neither is the Iranian government (although I would imagine that the vast majority of the population are very nice people indeed – when did they last riot for no good reason?). Forbury Gardens in Reading are nice, but not that well-known and certainly never ‘trend’ on Twitter. Why is all this relevant? Well, my viewing figures have been higher than normal this week; they already stand at nearly one thousand hits for the first three days of the week which in turn has brought me my 100,000th visitor a little sooner than expected. I’m just trying to work out which of the topics discussed this week at apsykes.com have attracted the influx of visitors. I think it must be the Iranians. Mention of them and their Ministry of Foreign Affairs no doubt triggered some switches at MI6 which in turn must have got the intelligence community flocking here only for them to to discover that most of the time I write about cycling… (Incidentally, I’ve just noticed this page on the Foreign Ministry website which links with what I was saying about the Iranians yesterday; it makes a short but interesting read).

Anyway, to these visitors, and the many more who have passed this way over the last 20 months, I say a big thank-you as the counter has now ticked past 100,000 page hits. I shouldn’t forget the 7,500 who kind-of came this way when the blog was hosted by Blogger in the first 16 months of its existence but it was only when I came to WordPress that the blog started to develop a distinct identity and pull in the crowds. Long may it continue.

Incidentally, for all you cynics out there who are thinking that a good number of those 100,000 are me, then think again. I always make sure that I log in before I enter the site and as WordPress puts it in their familiar, friendly style at the bottom of the ‘stats’ page “…Keep in mind we don’t count your own visits.”