The 2001 Christmas Annual was acclaimed to be even better than the previous year's Annual. I am not sure if I could manage so much work again, but it was worth it. Now we are embarking on the third year of publication, and the readership keeps growing. Christeen is producing more work, and Paul will return this year as well.

The 'Puzzles and Games' section attracted keen interest. It took a while to get Nanny Nappies' dressing game operating, which was entirely my fault. I had uploaded the individual images rather than uploading the folder that contained them. Once it was working it attracted a lot of readers, and there were three absolutely correct answers to the cryptic crossword, and very good attempts at the other puzzles.

The staff really have excelled themselves in 2001. This does not mean that there were any pay rises - good heavens, I couldn't possibly afford that, but I did provide a bottle of single malt whisky in which all partook at the works Christmas outing, held, as usual, at the Millfields Hotel in Grimsby. The genial proprieter was a bit taken aback when Marcia performed an outrageous can-can on the bar very late in the evening but, with a tight smile, he agreed to host our Christmas outing again in 2002.

Now, here is something to amuse all readers. Somebody has established a site for the oddest and silliest sites on the web, and I am afraid that we have made the grade. I did write to the person responsible a few months ago, pointing out that the child on the left in Helen Allingham's painting on our 'Contents' page was actually a boy, and a correction has been added. Apart from 'Petticoat Discipline Monthly' being there, readers will find much to entertain them at some of the site's other links. The self-styled 'Master at Lunacy' who manages the site makes comical but pointed attacks on sites ranging from the paranormal to paranoia; from the card-readers and spoon-benders, the Millerites and Velikovskians, the numerologists, phrenologists and palmistry-peddlars, and other shams and shamans who take advantage of a gullible public, or are just plain nuts. How we managed to get in I have no idea.

If you have any letters regarding petticoat or baby discipline from old publications, please send them in. I am publishing more than 160 letters a year, and always could do with more. Remember that at 'Petticoat Discipline Monthly' we are concerned with the softer, more loving kind of domestic discipline, presented in a tasteful and literate fashion: there are plenty of other places for fevered gothic fantasies.
Susan