Patrick Comerford
I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog, although the figures have slowed down this month after record-breaking and overpowering statistics last month. These figures passed 42 million late yesterday afternoon (24 June 2026), having passed the 41 million mark two weeks earlier (9 June 2026), the 40 million mark at the end of last month (28 May 2026) and 39 million a week earlier (22 May 2026). These figures passed the million mark six times last month (May 2026) and four times the month before (April 2026).
These viewing and reading figures are overwhelming and this blog continues to reach a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 21 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.
The total number of hits last month was the highest ever, with over 5.8 million hits in May 2026, compared with previous one-month highs in March 2026 (over 4.5 million) and April (almost 4.4 million). May’s figure of over 5.8 million was astonishing, considering it took almost 11 years, from July 2010 until 27 March 2021, to reach what I then thought was the staggering figure of 5 million hits.
I first began blogging back in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the ten days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were last month (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three were in March, and one was in February:
• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
The daily average was over 187,000 throughout May, but that figure was distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days. There were about 145,000 or more hits a day last month, but they are about 60,000-70,000 a day in June, with over 1.6 million hits in June so far. Yet, ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put this latest figure of 42 million into perspective:
Jakarta is the world's most populous city, with an estimated population of almost 42 million residents. The Indonesian capital city has officially surpassed Tokyo to become the world's largest megacity, according to the UN World Urbanisation Prospects report.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called on the international community to strengthen support for the nearly 42 million refugees worldwide who have fled their homes to escape conflict, violence or persecution.
An estimated 42 million people across six IGAD member states – Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, the Sudan and Uganda – face high levels of acute hunger.
In the US, 42 million people rely on Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) or food stamps to put food on the table. They include 16 million children, 8 million people over the age of 60, and million veterans.
The French data protection authority (CNIL) fined the telecoms provider Free Mobile €42 million for GDPR and data breach failings.
The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Barclays Bank £42 million due to historical lax management of financial crime risks.
A record-breaking £42 million was raised exclusively through the JustGiving platform during the London Marathon in 2024.
The World Health Organization (WHO) launched an appeal for $42 million to sustain essential health services and trauma care across Ukraine.
But, instead, let’s just humour ourselves with the figure 42 instead for a few moments.
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the number 42 is the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’, calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is. Thus, to calculate the Ultimate Question, a special computer the size of a small planet was built from organic components and named ‘Earth’.
The Ultimate Question, ‘What do you get when you multiply six by nine’, is found by Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in the second book of the series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. This appeared first in the radio play and later in the book versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It has been pointed out that 6 X 9 = 42 is in fact true … in base 13. That’s because 54=4*13+2 while ‘forty-two’ is 4*10+2. However, Adams claims not to have known that when he wrote it.
The fourth book in the series, the novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, has 42 chapters. According to the novel Mostly Harmless, 42 is the street address of Stavromula Beta.
In 1994, Adams created the 42 Puzzle, a game based on the number 42. There is some speculation that he chose the number 42 because it is also significant in Lewis Carrol’s Hunting of the Snark. But Adams says he picked the number simply as a joke, with no deeper meaning.
Lewis Carroll had famously recurring numbers in his works. He used Rule 42 in both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the introduction to The Hunting of the Snark, and Snark had a reference to the Baker having 42 boxes of clothes packed. Lewis Carroll was 42 when he wrote Snark, there are 42 illustrations in Wonderland and in Wonderland the King of Hearts announces in court: ‘Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court’.
Carroll lived in room number six, accessible through the seventh stairs in Christ Church, Oxford.
The number 42 also appears in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake – as ‘fortytwo hairs off his uncrown’ and ‘as a taste for storik’s fortytooth’.
As for 42 million, 42 million minutes add up to approximately 79 years, 10 months and 7 days, using standard calendar averages. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take almost 80 years, from July or August 1946, to reach today’s figure of 42 million.
I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 100-120 people on average continue to read my daily prayer diary on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 700 to 840 or more people each week.
This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 42 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 100-120 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.
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