2014 - time for another change?

With hindsight I shouldn't have stopped posting to this blog. That decision was just another example of "the way I am" - I either do something wholeheartedly or I don't do it at all. I know that my nearest and dearest sometimes find this character trait rather wearing, as indeed do I. Perhaps 2014 will be the year when I finally do something about this aspect of my nature that has cost me so dear more than once!

I'm not going to make any public commitment regarding the frequency of posting to my re-launched blog because if I don't have a target then I cannot fail to achieve it - and if I'm not failing to meet some self-imposed challenge then I shouldn't feel the need to beat myself up if events conspire to thwart me.

So what has happened since July 2013?

The good
The Ragleth Writers is a top-priority fixed point in my month. I have not missed a single meeting since I moved to Ticklerton.

The Walking for Health group on a Wednesday is good for me both physically and emotionally. It is a shame that it sometimes clashes with other equally important events.

My cemetery blog http://grave-mistakes.blogspot.co.uk/ attracts as many as 2000 visitors a day which exceeds my wildest pre-launch dreams by a factor of 10!

The bad or sad
My long running email conversation with a fellow amateur astronomer and teacher in the USA has come to an end after 6 years. I wrote a long email to her in the summer and a much shorter "Happy Christmas" email last month but neither received a reply. The exchanges had flagged somewhat over the last 18 months as our family and hobby priorities changed but prior to that our regular correspondence had been a source of much pleasure to me.

Eve and Ella have finally decided to go public with their decision to stop publishing their monthly newsletter and blog. They mentioned this to me some months ago so it didn't come as a total surprise. However my email inbox is full of shocked responses from their wide circle of friends and it is obvious that their decision is seen by many as marking the end of an era. The good news is that the entire operation has been passed on to very capable replacements who, by the way, have already been shouldering quite of a lot of the burden since September.

The ugly
The long running saga of who owns the copyright to the 4 books on Nigerian postal history written by me as part of the Philip Cockrill series came to an end. The Court of Chancery in Bristol found 100% in my favour and I was awarded costs plus damages. Despite this the illegal copies are still on sale in the USA - although not in the UK.