Hello shedders.
Once again I have deserted you in your month of need, and now all I'm doing is popping up to say 'Hello!' and 'Happy New Year!' and 'Would you mind giving me a hand with this corkscrew?'
It's been quite a year, and now, with just over an hour of daylight left till the end of my 200-bird challenge, it's all suspense and drama here as I scour the Isle of Wight high and low looking for the 196 birds I still need to make it to my target. I'm not sure I was as organised about it as I might have been.
I will, of course, be keeping the final outcome of the challenge well and firmly under my hat (it's a big hat) until the book is published, which I hope will be some time next year. And of course I will, according to the laws of New Year's Resolutions, update this shed regularly throughout January and hardly at all thereafter.
But let me just use this space to reiterate my eternal and depthy gratitude to all those who have contributed in any way at all to this silly project. It QUITE LITERALLY wouldn't have happened without you.
Meanwhile, to tide you all through what remains of 2016, have the best birds ever committed to celluloid. (Rejoinders to this statement to be posted below).
May your every wish and whim for 2017 be granted, preferably by an angelic and smiling figure clad in gold who stands at your shoulder and steers you through the thorny and plastic-bag strewn undergrowth of life while ladling molten chocolate into your mouth and massaging you just there no higher left a bit no no a bit more now down a bit aaaahhhh yesssss THERE.
Happy New Year.