So how was your Christmas break?

Ours were mixed. Ed KH had a lovely peaceful Christmas but got clobbered by the flu bug just after New Year and actually gave in - taking to bed for a duvet day which office dog Hebe thought was a great idea and surreptitiously insinuated herself under the duvet, just a small nose and a twitching tail left visible, followed by a couple of sofa days which allowed us to catch up on a small stack of DVDs.  Focus Co-ordinator AW's Christmas holiday was awful, the day itself was good Mr W cooked Christmas lunch with the home grown turkey and lots of veg whilst AW spent time with visiting family who unfortunately had brought with them foreign lurgies from Lincolnshire which they very generously shared with the rest of the family.  Her two small people (colloquially known as snotties, for reasonably obvious reasons) then sequentially developed the illness so by 7 January she was very pleased to get back to work, after four straight days of children's TV she feared her head was going to implode.  Although the rest of the team are not so sure about having her back as she's coughing fit to bust, so much so we half jokingly suggested a surgical mask!   SubEd HB had the best Christmas she can remember although the highlight was the New Year gathering and, for us at least, the tale of her voyage back home in the early hours which involved the salting of her boots (by dunking them in the grit bin, still on her feet - good job she's got long legs) to prevent sliding down the hill, which proved to be a surprisingly wise thing to do when another member of her group went skidding past at high speed.

Anyway we're back in the office and if not exactly raring to go ready for the challenge ahead, which is turning out to be rather mountainous. Deputy Ed TB has already typed up over 100 new ads and they're still coming in thick and fast.  The website has been busier than for a long time with lots of news, 100's of training courses, several new Classified entries plus those all important job ads.

The first CJS Weekly edition of 2013 has now gone to print, and it's a stonker!  21 pages with 107 adverts, 39 of them for volunteers, plus details of a few changes (more information to follow next week) and a round up of the big news stories from over our holiday break.