Quality or Quantity

Hello all. Before I post the photos, since this post is primarily a series of captioned photos and not so much a story (much to your relief eh?), I'd like to answer a query.

I have been asked why I don't post as often as some other bloggers. Quite a lot out there post daily, or almost daily, yet RFR usually gets a new post around once a week, sometimes even less. 

Now, first let me say that there's no hidden agenda and I have no wish to upset anyone else. This is purely an independent opinion and it's simply the way I see things. it's not aimed at anyone else, please do accept that on face value. One has to be sooo careful these days!

Having got that out of the way, here's my take on blogging. 

First and foremost, I never underestimate the enormous privilege of having other people read my "stuff" on a regular basis. If you're not a blogger yourself, you may not know the writers on "blogger" get a page of stats in which they can examine all sorts of data about which countries are providing the most "hits", which posts and/or pages are most popular and which "link route" readers may have followed to find the blog in the first place. To think that several thousand people out there in internet-land read this stuff is to me something for which I'm deeply grateful and it's very humbling. After all, these people have lives to lead.

Which leads me to my main thought about how often I believe it's sensible to post. When someone reads this stuff they're taking precious moments from their own lives and I like to think that this is because they derive some pleasure from it and hopefully often pick up new information that they'll find useful or enjoyable. So, I believe that I ought to hold these readers in great respect and never take their interest for granted. See, I feel that if I were to post more frequently, like every 24 hours or so, I'd be taking advantage, I'd be stealing even more of the reader's precious time. I hope this makes sense. I could post more often, but to do so could also mean that I'd often be posting substandard stuff whilst also expecting the readers to give up even more of their time simply for my vanity. To post almost daily is to assume that there are folk out there who have that much time to waste in reading my words, thus suggesting that perhaps my life is much more interesting than theirs. This is essentially why I like to post on average not more than once a week and - hopefully - this means that readers will be eager to read the new post and they'll also agree that's it's worthwhile information.

If you've been reading RFR for any length of time, you'll hopefully know that if I haven't posted for, say, 10 days or so, it's because I haven't really got anything that I think the reader would find interesting enough anyway. I'd hate to be posting substandard stuff simply to keep the frequency up. Plus I hold all of my readers in too high a regard for that.

There we are then. I've got that off my chest. Hope I explained it with sufficient clarity. Thanks for taking the time to read it and, as a reward, here are some recent photos of Naxos, Paros and Rhodes. Each photo carries its own caption. Hope you like them:

The Portara at Naxos, of course. It's half-heartedly roped off, but no one takes any notice of that. It's said that anyone who walks through it will always return to Naxos. It worked in our case.

Naxos, Old Market area. One can wander aimlessly here for ages. We've done it several times and every time found somewhere we hadn't been before.

There's that woman again...

Still in the Old Market area, Naxos.

Yea, that's me, trying to look moody.

I get the feeling they're closed for the afternoon.

Sea Lavender on the headland that separates Naxos harbour area from St. George Beach. It's dwarfed, no doubt due to the amount of wind it has to deal with. It's a beautiful plant though. We have it on Rhodes, but it's rare as hen's teeth.

Yea, guess what. the old Market area yet again.

On board the Blue Star ferry awaiting cast-off on our day trip from Naxos to Paros. Neat shot of the Portara, eh?

A Paros frappé moment.

A pleasant little corner of Paros Town.

And finally, the jacaranda tree in our orchard here on Rhodes; or more specifically, in the orchard at home that we tend for our friends and landlords. It's only taken 10 years for this to flower. Tell you what, it was worth the wait. If you click on this one to see the larger version, see if you can spot the bumble bee. (Once you have the larger version on screen, right-click and open it in a new tab. Then you should see your mouse change to a magnifying glass, meaning that one more click and you get a really large version that you need to move around in order to see it all. In that one the bumble bee is very clearly visible.)