Like my antiquated predecessor, Jim Eyre Esq., I fell into the trap of thinking that being the editor of the N.P.C. would be a 'cushy number', and I could look forward to my spell in office with nothing to do except edit the Newsletter, which the President does anyway.

Unfortunately, I had reckoned without the tenacity of Messrs. Sudell and Stanton who, along with their Polish sidekick, broke through into Notts II immediately after the AGM. They came back babbling about "Leck Fell Master Caves", (Great), "Miles and Miles of Passage" (Great), "Lots of Pretties", (Great), and "It'll make a super main article for the Journal" (Oh, Shit !)

I tried to palm off my responsibilities onto a Journal subcommittee (Pete Riley, Chris 'Dani' Danilewicz, Barry Sudell, John White and John Cordingley) but they were having none of that and I had to be Chairman - people were obviously missing the point !

So followed several months of chasing around after articles (I'm still chasing Barker's), printers and each other before we had to sit down and sort the articles out, edit them and prepare them for printing. The good thing about having a Journal subcommittee is that the editor doesn't have to do all this leg-work himself and I would like to thank them for putting a lot of work into the Journal and giving me much needed support when required (usually in the New Inn). The subcommittee were very sweet when it came to castigations from the full committee though: they let me have those all to myself !

I would like to thank our wordprocessist, Andy Waddington, for his tireless efforts in setting up the script in the word processor, doing many corrections to the text and for general help, advice and research work. Thanks also to Bob Hryndyj for doing an excellent job of drawing up the Notts and Osu surveys, Jim Eyre for his excellent cartoons and to everyone else who has contributed to the Journal.

The subject matter of this Journal is fairly varied, and there should be a "Bit in it for everyone", although I can see people commenting on the fact that there are a lot of diving articles. However, I think that this is only right, as it represents a main area of activity in the club at present.

One area of club activity that hasn't had an article written about it is being pulled out of a nice friendly boozer on a Saturday night to battle across mist-shrouded fells lashed with horizontal rain in order to pull people out of flooded caves. The thing that never ceases to astound on these escapades is the fact that people still insist on going down flood-liable systems in appalling weather conditions with apparent disregard for flood warnings in the guide books, weather forecasts and common sense.

I think the only way to avoid this problem is to stop boozing next door to the Cave Rescue Depot. Nothing else will alter.