Hi, One of our subscribers pointed me to this thread and I note that Mike said 'Maybe Pete can be persuaded to respond?" I am quite happy to respond, I am just not a regular user of forums and find these 'modern' methods of conversations difficult. In one of the threads somebody said that we communicated badly during our 'troubles'. We could and should have done better, but those people who phoned the office generally got a good idea of what was happening. In an nutshell we were short of money and swamped with work.

Email communication is supposed to be easy, but when we send out newsletters it it surprising how much gets trapped up in spam filters when we send out bulk mail. At the moment I have over 1200 emails in my inbox marked as 'unread'. This doesn't mean that I haven't read them, it means that I really should reply. The situation a year ago was much worse but I have been rescued by our daughter Fiona who now deals with the 'admin' email accounts from Donegal. She can keep on top of these and deal with most things, but the more difficult issues land on my lap. These take time - and often time I don't have.

I don't want this to become a 'poor Pete' email sharing my woes. We are doing a difficult job on limited resources but the world is still turning round and I am still alive and putting on weight.

I should perhaps address other issues in a series of shorter emails. I may repeat myself later but I am totally committed to a printed publication. We had our reasons for doing this 20 years ago, I think that it is important that we ask ourselves what the purpose and aims of the magazine are now. The situation is not the same - and of anything the job that needs to be done now is even harder.

Cheers

Pete Heywood