Dear Friends,
I can hardly believe
that this is the 21st time that I have sat down, a few days before
Christmas, and written an account of the previous year’s activities for the CFZ
members, friends, and supporters.
This is always a
bittersweet time for me, because – especially as I grew older – each year
brings with it a list of friends, colleagues, and collaborators who have passed
on to the Elysian Fields. This year the list is headed by my old friend Daevid
Allen who died of cancer in Australia in March at the age of 77. As well as
being an important influence on me, musically and culturally, it was through
him that I met my long term friend, boss, and CFZ benefactor Rob Ayling.
Long term CFZ cohort
Richard Ingram died in the early summer at the age of 68. I had known him for
the best part of thirty years, and it is a shock to know that he will never
again be a lecturer at the Weird Weekend. Our thoughts are with his son Michael
who is left fatherless at an upsettingly young age.
Two important faces
from the Bigfoot community died this year. Rob Riggs and Ray Crowe were both
affiliated to the CFZ, the former via Nick Redfern, and although I never met
either man in the flesh, I carried out a lively correspondence with both for
more then a decade. They will be sadly missed.
This has been a
complicated, confusing, but ultimately quite a rewarding year. It started with
disappointment for Richard Freeman who was struck down by gout the day that he
was meant to be flying to Australia
for the second CFZ Australia Tasmania expedition the report in Animals & Men, and indeed the
expedition report at the 2015 Weird Weekend was given by our old friend Lars
Thomas.
The expedition
gathered more data to support the idea that the CFZ’s totem animal, the thylacine or Tasmanian wolf survived its supposed extinction in 1936, and remains a
living creature today it has, after all, been described as ‘The liveliest
extinct animal alive’.
Arguably more
important was the work that Lars Thomas did with the microfauna of the region,
obtaining several interesting specimens, some of which appear to be entirely
new species to science.
In last years annual
report, I pledged that for the first time since 2003 the CFZ flagship journal
Animals & Men would meet its stated publication schedule of four issues a
year. In order to do this we underwent the biggest shake up of our publication
schedule, and – indeed our membership structure for the past twenty-one years.
For the first time ever, we removed the subscription model, and Animals & Men began to be published
in three different formats.
- An online flipmag embedded on the CFZ
publications website and reachable through links on the blogs and main
site. This is, and will remain
free.
- A hard copy, traditional magazine
available at low cost from amazon and all associated outlets.
- A Kindle edition formatted to be read on
electronic book readers.
In January, we were
approached by out old friend and colleague Dr Andrew May who offered to sort
out the increasingly outdated CFZ publications website. This turned out to be a
massive undertaking, and by the time he and I had finished, the main CFZ
website had been given a stringent, and the brand new CFZ publications website
and CFZ shop had been built from scratch.
For some years we have
been trying to arrange publication of our books and magazines in eBook format.
For a number of reasons this never happened, causing a great deal of conflict
within the CFZ community. Andrew May sorted it out once and for all, and now,
something in the region of a third of our publications are available in eBook
format. As anybody who has ever dipped their toe into the increasingly murky
waters of internet publishing will know, there are quite a few different
formats that eBooks can be published in, most of them are incompatible with each
other.
We decided to publish
in the Kindle format because there are three apps available in most other
formats which mean that Kindle books can be read on Android, iOS, and PC
formats (amongst others).
We would like to publicly
thank Andrew May for all of his hard work this year and for very patiently
explaining the intricacies of internet publishing to an old duffer like me. I
truly do not know what we would have done without him.
Another important
change took place this summer. Because of an increasing work load, and – I have
to admit – my failing health I have been getting further and further behind
with the things that I have to do. Regular CFZ watchers will know my adopted
niece Jessica Taylor, she has been doing voluntary work with us on an ad hoc
bases since she was about 12 and hanging out in my office playing Zoo Tycoon
for some years before that. When I decided that I had to bite the bullet and
engage a proper assistant for 20hours a week, Jessica, Fresh from studying Business
Studies at the local college was the only realistic candidate. She started
working for us in July and has been bullying me (although she insists that it
is for my own good) ever since.
Joking aside she is a
lovely girl and I always look forward to the days that she is in the office.
The previous CFZ
interns Saskia England and Sheri Myler have both left. Sheri has now graduated
and is working in a national park in the North of England, and Saskia is
studying Marine biology in Plymouth University. Therefore two large intern-shaped
holes in the CFZ infrastructure. We are very happy to say that Charlotte
Phillipson and Nadine Rider have joined the team as interns. I am giving both
of them lessons in natural history, officially to Nadine because she is home
schooled. I am very much an old school naturalist and am appalled in the way
that the modern education system seems to roundly ignore most of the things I
consider to be important., so in my owl little way I am trying to redress the
balance.
This year we also took
on another one of my adopted nephews, Danny Owens to replace Mark Raines as
gardener and groundsman after Mark left the village. Seldom have we had anyone
as hard working and diligent as Danny, and I only wish we could afford to take
him on full time.
The Weird Weekend was
held on the third weekend of August, once again at The Small School. This year’s
speakers were:
- Nick Wadham: Wild and Deadly Animal Show
- Lee Walker: Urban Legends of
- Lars Thomas: Microcyrptozoology
- Judge Smith: Ouija Boards
- Shoshanna Hughes: Feral Cats
- Rob Cornes: The Seal Serpent:
- Ronan Coghlan: Irish Cryptozoology
- Rosie Curtis: Scary Internet Memes
- Steve Rider: Tales from the Infinet
- Jaki Windmill: Astroshemanics
- Richard Freeman: Dragons
- Adam Davis: Manbeasts and Me
- Lars Thomas:
- Richard Muirhead: Mystery animals of
One of the highlights
of the weekend came when Carl Marshall, Lars Thomas and I presented the latest
evidence in our long standing investigation into the possibility of a hither to
unrecorded mammal species for the UK, the beech marten. Much to my surprise and
pleasure, Carl presented me with a taxiderm specimen of one of these creatures
believe to have been taken in Dorset during the 19th Century; seldom
have I had a better birthday present. We continued with our programme of
publishing this year, with the following titles:
- More Stars Steeds and Other Dreams: The
Collected Poems. By Dr Karl P N Shuker
- Sasquatch Down. By Michael Newton
- The Song of Panne (Being Mainly about
Elephants). By Jonathan Downes
- Weird Wessex: A Tourist Guide to 100
Strange and Unusual Sights. By Andrew May and Paul Jackson
- Glimpses in the Twilight. By Lee Walker
- Brundannon’s Daughter; Through the Realms
of the Woodwose. By Corinna Downes
- Going Mad to Stay Sane. By Andy White
- In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman.
By Dmitri Bayanov
- The Scribbling Sea Serpent. By Kate Kelly
- Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to
Cryptozoology – Volume 2. By George Eberhart
- Strange Skies, Strange Eyes. By Brian
Allan
We have also published
Volume Three of the Journal of Cryptozoology, edited by my old friend Dr Karl
Shuker and we look forward to publishing Volume four in 2016.
The 2016 publishing
schedule includes major new books by: Dr Karl Shuker, Richard Muirhead, S .D.
Tucker, Rob Cornes, Brian Allan, Matt Salusbury, Richard Freeman, and more.
As mentioned earlier,
this year saw a major reorganisation of the CFZ membership package. As a result
of this, in the Autumn we instituted a new CFZ monthly members newsletter. The
third issue of which will be emailed out on the 1st of January.
Reaction to this has been extremely favourable so far, and we look forward to
it becoming a much loved and welcome edition to the CFZ publication schedule.
2016 will see the
return of the CFZ Yearbook, and – after all of the upheavals of recent years,
we hope that it will be back as a regular event in the CFZ publishing schedule.
Something else that has been missing in recent years has been out monthly web
TV show and we are pleased to announced that plans are underway to bring it
back in earlier 2016, co-presented by Charlotte Phillipson.
We have this year had
funding difficulties, entirely related to the loss of income from my house in Exeter and the length of
time it had taken to effect the repairs necessary. This has severely affected
our cash flow, and is purely the result of us trusting the wrong people. And to
ensure you that things will return to normal soon. It only remains for me to wish
you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous 2016.
Jon Downes
(Director CFZ)
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