Turning to the old grey donkey.

Today was supposed to be a busy, buzzy day, but after escaping it at Christmas, a revolting snotty cold bug snuck up and climbed into bed with me last night. It's not easy to feel busy and buzzy when you've been awake half the night wondering whether to go downstairs and make a hot Lemsip to sup, or whether to lay in bed feeling sorry for yourself while you sniffle and snuffle for oxygen. The Lemsip won the toss, so at 2.30 am, I was bumbling around my kitchen in robe and fluffy slippers, trying to clear my muffly head. Needless to say, I couldn't get back to sleep. Hmph.

And despite having become a snotty slug overnight, I knew I would have a flurry of insistent 'British Bears on the Net' emails to face this frosty morning. They were inevitable after my decision to raise the question of reviewing the viability of our old BBN email chat group which has been run through Yahoo for the past ten years. On the one hand, it has been great to hear from old members long since quiet, at last pleading their case for the retention of our now flagging email voice, but on the other hand, I am left wondering what the point of a chat group can possibly be, when it patently no longer chats? It's a tricky problem! I am the sole custodian of the original British Bears on the Net group, established a decade ago to support and inform those interested in the development of the UK teddy bear world. I have worked hard over the years to keep things focused and moving forward, but I must admit, as regards the BBN email chat group, I feel as though I've been banging my head on a very lonely wall for quite a while; which is what led me to set up the new BBN forum last year - a modern format for BBN in 2008 designed to bring it bang up to-date. On the whole, the forum has been very well received and I believe in this day and age, is a far more useful resource than our old email based system ever could be; however, it sure is tough trying to convince some of the old timers change can be a positive thing; nostalgia, it appears, can prove a determined adversary!

Our new BBN forum

So instead of being a busy, buzzy kind of day, today is rather a snuffly, breathless, muffly headed kind of day - which leads me to recall a quote from one of our greatest philosophers ...

"The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about."

AA Milne/Winnie the Pooh - as pertinent today as ever!