SAME OLD SAME OLD

My dear friends,

Thank you for your support over the last weeks and months. The CFZ bloggo has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. We get about 2,000 hits a day which is nothing compared to some sites, but when you consider we were getting about 30 a day at the beginning of the year, it is pretty damn special. I was in Ireland when we passed the half million point, which was a pity, because I had been looking forward to doing a bit of self-congratulatory crowing, but since then we have had over 21,000 hits, and no doubt by the time today is over many more.

I know that our publication schedule has gone to cock a bit this year. The recession has hit us badly, and we narrowly escaped some serious unpleasantness in february which ended up with our big laser printer being repossessed. I always hated the bloody thing, and am glad it has gone, but it did screw up our production schedule badly.

All three of our periodicals: Animals & Men the journal of the CFZ, The CFZ Yearbook, which since 1996 has been the world's only regular book length fortean zoological publication, and The Amateur Naturalist which does exactly what it says on the tin, and replaced Exotic Pets earlier this year, will continue. However, it may be some time before the publication schedule gets back to normal. The Amateur Naturalist is the worst hit, because it is the most time consuming and least cost effective, but it will be back next year - bigger and better, and hopefully properly on schedule.

Animals & Men should be out again before Christmas, and we hope that next year our quaterly production schedule will be resumed. The 2010 Yearbook will be out at the end of the year, and we are still looking for research papers for it.

However, the biggest obstacle to us doing what we do as well as we would like to do it is - as it always has been - lack of resources. The last month has seen some amazingly generous donations from you guys, and I feel horribly churlish for doing an Oliver Twist and asking for more. But if there is anyone out there who wants to help wioth our ongoing programmes of research, education, animal rescue, and publishing, and has time, money or equipment to spare, please get in touch..

We need ya!