I thought I’d write an explanation of why progress on getting the Elfin Diary archives online is so slow.

I’ve been intending to do this archiving project since the autumn of 2023, when I decided I could no longer carry on publishing the Diary. At the time, I optimistically thought that it would take me no more than a year – or maybe two – to complete.

However, my husband had just passed and I was poleaxed for many months by what I now recognise as depression. In addition, I had (and still have) chronic health problems, including mylagia and arthritis, that limit what I can physically do (for example, I can’t sit in a chair for long, nor can I look at a screen for hours any more). So I just slog along, doing what I can do.

At the moment, I am just finishing off the Chronicles of the 20th Century, published in the 1999 and 2000 editions of the Diary. What I thought would be a fairly simple copy-and-paste job is turning out to be much slower than I’d anticipated, because I keep finding so many errors and typos; Caroline, always something of a slapdash Sagittarius, didn’t spend too much time on proofreading. But me being the type (Saturn in Virgo opposite Pisces Sun) that cannot bear to let mistakes go uncorrected, have to proofread and factcheck everything.

So, at least you, dear reader, will know that (most of) the facts here are correct.