Dear Everybody

This is a note of apologies. I have to apologlse to those who got the January issue, to those who did not get it and to those who will get it! To an awful lot of people I come to think!

All of you who did receive the January issue, please accept my apologies for the less-than-perfect printing. We now have a new printer from this issue onwards and hopefully this prohlem will go away. (The copy you are now holding either proves or disproves this hope, but at the time of writing I do not know; I can only hope!).

All of you who did not get the January issue, please accept my apologies too. Lots of copies got lost in the post because of poor packaging; we have a new mailing agent now and the fact that you are reading this means, that they did their job properly!

All of you who received the January and April issues together, I apologise for that as well. When large consignments were identified as missing, we tried to have extra copies printed but this took time and they had to be despatched with the April issue. (I say "we", but actually Susan Duff should take the credit for chasing around, organising printers, mailing agents etc; without her effort we wouldn't be in the position to hope that the problem is solved).

Now, with apologies out of the way, what about the cartoon competition? With the delays and mixing up, I thought it might be better to extend the deadline to be the same as the copy deadline for the July issue, (20 May); this way everybody will have the opportunity to participate. Don't forget: the first prize is US$50.

Finally, I would like to thank all those who sent messages and notes with constructive comments and expressed support and appreciation for the January issue. I hope you will find this issue equally interesting and informative.

Maria Petrou