Yes, we are still alive! Our apologies for the inordinate delay between magazines but Dave was a bit too optimistic when estimating the amount of time needed to turn a one building, one door, two room Fantasy shop into a two building, one door, four room, all singing, all dancing, everything you wanted from a military book and game shop with Space Orks thrown in, business. (As well as attending shows, musters and keeping things ticking over on the mail order as well). Consequently we have published absolutely nothing since the Conferences earlier this year. On top of that, just when I thought I could cut down on my six monthly average of working 6 days a week I'm shocked to find that "HO HO HO little re-enactor and what do you want in your Christmas Snapsack" is suddenly upon us.

So, grovelling apologies, many thanks for your patience and believe me we haven't been twiddling our thumbs when we could have been slaving over a hot word processor. We now have the shop operating smoothly, and Janet Wiles (who some of you will know from the Conferences) helping me turn around most orders within a day of receipt and slowly bringing down the huge paperwork mountain to manageable levels. My next plan is to actually have a whole day off a week with the family. This will be followed up by spending more time publishing when the paper backlog is finally conquered (Round about the time we have the conferences, wargames shows start and the new reenactment season commences!!). Sorry if it sounds more like an AGM report than an editorial but PP's magazine readers have always been more like club members than customers.

A quick bit of magazine-related editorial before I dash to the post. A few of you (stand up Sgt. Frampton, ring leader-extraordinaire) have bemoaned the fact that the mags have recently been heavily weighted towards long articles and that the short, snappier pieces of the old days are sorely missed.

This is a fair criticism. Yes, pieces received have tended towards the in-depth article and away from the Notes & Queries approach of the first magazines. However I think that I am more to blame - the slicer pressure on copy dates (larf larf) means that it is easier to slain in 30K worth of article already on disc in one go rather than me spending all day typing up small pieces. Mea Culpa. Hopefully the pressure will soon be off and we can get back to a balanced magazine. So get those Notes and snippets to us now.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

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