I suspect that some readers of this blog will be pleased to hear that I am planning a relatively quiet weekend.

The last week or two have been furiously busy on the blog, but also with other professional work, and I think a break from my usual frantic pace might be required.

I would live to go to the March for Nature in London today, but I am listening to my fatigued body, and will be taking some quiet time instead.

That said, there are reasons for satisfaction. It looks likely that this will be the first month in the history of this blog when there will have been 600,000 reads.

The YouTube channel is going incredibly well given how recently it has been reestablished. In the last four weeks videos have been viewed about 250,000 times, with average watching durations well above YouTube averages.

What is particularly interesting about this is that less than 10% of this traffic seems to be coming from this blog. This means that we are reaching significant new audiences.

This is also true for TikTok, where our following has increased by well over 10% in the last week, and some of our videos are being viewed more than 50,000 times. That said, 4,000 seems to be more commonplace. This seems to be an almost entirely new audience, and unlike YouTube, where the average age profile appears to be only a little lower than that for this blog, the TikTok profile is very much younger. Again, this means new audiences are being reached.

Overall, the ideas I promote here might have doubled their audience in a couple of months. Of course, the election has helped. But once traction has been generated it is rarely lost.

In that case I can afford to take some time for reflection before the final run into the general election begins. Binoculars around my neck, I am out birdwatching this morning.