NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE BLAH BLAH BLAH

First of all I would like to apologise to everyone who has been trying to talk to me over the last few days, especially dear Naomi. I am feeling pretty horrible at the moment, and find it hard to talk lucidly to anyone, either in the flesh or online. Life is not particularly easy at the moment, and it is made worse by the abscence of most of the CFZ crew about their own affairs. Richard is in Staffordshire, Graham in London, and this is a particularly bad time for my serotonin levels to crash and burn. Please forgive me guys....

There is good news and there is bad news.

We are beginning to dig ourselves out of the hole in which we found ourselves earlier this summer. However, the additional curve-ball caused by the crash of our hard drive a few weeks ago has presented us with a whole slew of new problems (as if we didn't have enough on our plates).

Therefore, it is - I believe - cards on the table time.

• My old office computer, which we have had for the past three years, is on its last legs, and I do not want to trust it any more. I am in the process of backing up everything that I can, (quite a lot was already backed up), but it is a long, slow process
• The new computer (which cost most of our reserves) will be arriving today. Oll, Dave B-P and I will be setting it up later on
• Once the new computer (which is much more powerful with 9.2 GHz of processor) is up and running I shall be able to resume video editing etc, and the WW videos will be up on CFZtv. It is a great disappointment that we were not able to get them up as quickly as last year, but such is life
• I lost a hell of a lot of data when the hard drive went. I have learned my lesson from this, but it is too late to cry over spilt milk. Some of this stuff is retrievable, other stuff is lost forever, and other stuff will have to be reconstituted from scratch. This is a long and slow process, and will involve a great deal of work.
• Amongst the data lost are the latest editions of Animals & Men and The Amateur Naturalist and the pdf templates for both. We shall, therefore, have to start from scratch in redesigning both publications. This means that the publication schedule for both magazines is now all to cock. There will be a new edition of A&M before the end of the year, but I make no promises about TAN. This does not mean that TAN is going out of publication, but it does mean that it is on hiatus until we manage to get things back on track.
• The CFZ Yearbook will appear as planned, and we are now actively soliciting articles for it. We do, however, not make any poromises as to whether it will arrive in time for Christmas
• I am presently working on reconstituting Andy Roberts's anthology. This is now about a fortnight behind schedule. Lizzy has just finished proofing Nick Molloy's Predator Deathmatch and will be starting on Carl Portman's new book in the next day or two. Naomi has just finished first proofing Richard Freeman's book, and I am working on Karl Shuker's book of poetry.

Basically, guys, life is pretty difficult at the moment, but there is light at the end of the tunnel, and it doesn't seem to be an oncoming train. We are still up the creek, but now we have several paddles....