So this journal is 2 years old today. Also Ashley Jane Kneeland is 20. I went to Corbis to find a card (for Ashley Jane, not for the journal. It doesn't know it's two years old and wouldn't know what to do with a card) and idly tapped in Gaiman, wondering if I could send her a Patagonian Birthday Card. (Ashley Jane is my son Mike's girlfriend. She came out here this summer and helped out while Mike was in the Bay Area doing Adobe things, and is A Good Thing. Happy Birthday Ashley Jane.)

Instead, I found myself looking at a photograph of the Royal Stork Stakes. It would seem to be a photo from my Uncle Monty's betting shop in Portsmouth some time in the early 1960s (judging from the list of names, I'd hazard that it was after the birth of Prince Andrew and before that of Prince Edward). I put Uncle Monty, hunchback, betting shop and all, into Mister Punch.

Just one of those odd things that the world wide web gives us.

Two years, eh? Good lord.

Anyway: lots of thanks to the people who actually make this website work -- including Julia Bannon and Lisa Gallagher at Harper Collins, Sunil and the gang at Authors on the Web, GMZoe, Cindy and all the other people who helped by writing content and making things happen. It's possible I'll blog less as Anansi Boys starts to get written. Or possibly not. We'll see.