The Pigdump home office has been beset with one calamity after another. And not to go on and on and on about not being able to eat potato chips - hell, potatoes for that matter - or the demise of the fluffy orange kitty Frank, or the layoffs that seem to follow us around, or the lack of cash in the company coffers, not to mention SARS, tainted cows and skeeters...okay, you see? This spring has been nasty long and brutish.

And then our fancy digital camera broke. Which is okay for a little while when there's been nothing going on and no money to spend if anything were going on. So the Pigdump visitors haven't missed much Top Quality Photo Content™.

That is until this past weekend. Not only was there a bear on the porch at the Pigdump northern retreat, followed by a beautiful hawk perched on the railing of said porch, but there was also a smashing book-signing where Pigdump's editor-in-chief got up close and personal with a famous Scottish mystery writer and the little film camera didn't flash - the moment missed for all time!

So we had to replace the little camera (tough going when the slush fund has disappeared) and we've made a picture of Pigdump's editor-in-chief posing with Ian Rankin - sort of. This is how it might have been if things weren't so f___ed-up lately.

Thanks and good luck.