As usual, Ross saw crowds gathering at the Market House from a little before midnight on Saturday to celebrate the arrival of another new year. At 11:30 I went along with my camera to capture the moment. Being stone cold sober and alone amongst a huge crowd because Tina was at work, I must admit that the atmosphere took a while to sink in with me this year but it did eventually and I enjoyed capturing the brief moments at the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006.

Going out on New Year's Eve always makes me aware of just how many younger local readers this web site actually has. With virtually the whole of Ross-on-Wye's younger generation gathered together in one place and a good many of my own generation too, I have to pull my woolly hat down over my eyes, don a false moustache and hide the camera right until the last possible moment. Either that or take hundreds more photographs than I am able to publish. I did get stopped a few times this year and I have put the photos of those who asked nicely below. Most are without names as I'm afraid I did not have time to take notes but I know the Prosser family, who asked me to photograph them for Sean in Australia, who reads this news magazine regularly (seventh photo down). Happy New Year, Sean! Love from Alison and Co. and 'Hi' from me also. Hope you had a good time down under!

Happy New Year to all Wyenot News readers, wherever you happen to live - even those in Dagenham. I sincerely hope 2006 is a good one for you all!

Although I do have the December 2005 viewer figures to hand, I have not fully analysed them yet. I did intend to publish this week's Wyenot News on Wednesday, which would have given me time to finish the job but today I have received about a dozen emails, all asking, 'When are the New Year photos going to be on the web site?' I have therefore decided to stick to the usual Tuesday deadline, despite it being a holiday weekend. It has been a very quiet week news wise, so it is not too difficult to do that.

I can tell you that Mrs. Jones from Scunthorpe is a shapely 38/28/36, weighing in at 9st 7oz, that 18,906 viewers looked at 65,313 pages of the site during the month, that there were 356,376 'hits' and that on Christmas Day itself (which is traditionally one of the quietest days of the year) 561 people looked at 2026 pages of the web site.

To save myself some work so that I get something of a break myself, I have been a little lazy this week and crammed the news onto two pages. I hope it loads OK if you're using dial-up.