Introduction to the Collected Andysezs

Kent, in his usual indomitable style, has decided that the ANDYSEZs should be included on the ACKMA CD-ROM. Well here they are! They were scanned by Kent from the pages of the Journal and I have edited them slightly to correct formatting errors, to produce consistency of style and layout, and to correct some errors. The scanning process produced, as usual, some additional funny things - hopefully most of the glitches have been caught. The quality of the graphics has been further reduced by the scanning - my apologies. The references have been consolidated at the end.

Readers will have noted that, whilst the ANDYSEZs are numbered one to thirty, there are only 27 here. This is an error of mine. When I first started to write these I numbered a list of potential subjects and these got muddled up with the actual columns. I had hoped to get the time to write three additional ANDYSEZs to fill up these gaps but the deadline has passed and I have been very busy...

I would like to take the opportunity to thank those who have written complete ANDYSEZs for me - Ruth Lyons, Dianne Vavryn, Ken Grimes and Ian Houshold - and those who have contributed ideas or suggestions. There may well be errors of fact, of interpretation and so on - nobody has pointed out any (to my relief). I hope this has not been out of mere politeness.

The first ANDYSEZ is highly anecdotal - the quality improves beyond the first and the subject matter ranges widely from heavy(ish) science to the historical bureaucracy of cave exploration. In spite of my grumbles I have enjoyed writing these bits of speleological ephemera - I hope that they have been useful.