diamond geezer

Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Sunday was the third busiest day ever on diamond geezer. That's as measured by the number of people visiting the blog, which in this case was over five times more than an average Sunday.

I thought it might be because of my post about the history of British Summer Time but no, as is usual in these cases it was an old post coming to the fore as a focus of interest. It was only a week old but no longer current because it was a post about my Dad's birthday. People found the combination of "asbestos can be really bad for you" and "it's not great when a parent dies at a young age" evocative, hence a single mention on the Hacker News portal gained more upvotes than anything else I've written, also 212 comments. "It still cuts me up to think about how my kids have never known my dad, and their grandad," said hnlmorg. "Great article to reinforce my unease at finding asbestos tiles while remodeling a bedroom," said moribvndvs. It's always a surprise what resonates.

The top ten days on diamond geezer
1) What are the History Trees in the Olympic Park? [28 May 2022]
2) Where is London's most central sheep? [23 Jan 2025]
3) The dangers of asbestos/Losing a parent early [26 Oct 2025]
4) 901 people voting differently could have changed the outcome of the General Election [13 May 2015]
5) Where are London's pylons? [26 Oct 2022]
6) You can now walk underground from Liverpool Street to Farringdon [27 May 2022]
7) Where is London's busiest bus stop? [23 June 2024]
8) What are the History Trees in the Olympic Park? [29 May 2022]
9) Why are there concrete blocks strewn along Northwall Road? [26 Jan 2024]
10) 109 journeys between tube stations that are quicker to walk [6 May 2011]

Close behind: Why are there so many candy stores on Oxford Street? Aren't the new queueing aragements at the National Gallery awful? Precisely how many High Streets are there in London? Can you believe Bob Dylan painted my photograph of Blackpool Pier? Where is the southernmost point in London? Where in London is over 1 mile from a station? How amazing is this new Countdown information for every bus stop in London?

I checked through the Top 10 to see which web services had brought people here and it was 40% Hacker News, 40% Reddit and 20% Twitter. Both the Twitter pile-ons were more than 10 years ago. Most of the rest are from the last four years. And as usual when this kind of thing happens, I doubt any of the 12000 extra visitors will ever come back.

posted 12:00 :

<< click for Newer posts

click for Older Posts >>

click to return to the main page