First of all, our biggest and best piece of news is: there are now three of us! Rebecca Dilys (a.k.a. Becky) was born on 23 June 1991. She weighed 7lbs 6 oz and was 21 inches long. After only three weeks she was sleeping through the night - and we haven't had a sleepless night since! The experience of being parents is really thrilling for us, and seeing Becky deve lop is amazing; she seems to learn new tricks each day. Probably the most impressive is splashing Dad in the bath, an activity at which she has already acquired quite remarkable expertise! She has inherited the renowned appetite of both parents.

The arrival of Becky meant, of course, a major change in Jill's working life. She left work (officially) about 3 weeks before Becky was born. A fact of academic life, though, is that 'officially' doesn't mean much - in reality she was in work on the very last wee kday before the birth! She returned to work on a part-time basis (one-third time) in November. We've fixed up a child-minder for Becky for the days Jill is in work, so things are working out quite well in that respect.

Work has continued unabated. Jill won an award for the quality of her teaching - only four such awards exist in the university, so she was pretty chuffed, as you can imagine. I seemed to have a glut of conferences to go to (and present papers at) this yea r - in London, Cambridge, Malta and Lisbon. In the case of the latter two I was able to take a day (in Malta) and half a day (in Lisbon) to do some sightseeing - that was a nice perk.

Because of Becky our holidays were spent near home this year - a week in North Wales and a week in York. Both were very enjoyable.

Throughout the year we've been involved in selling our house. The market has been as flat as Princess Stephanie's singing. Added to that, our building society (Nationwide) seems to move with all the alacrity of a snail on slee ping pills when it comes to making decisions about mortgages. Still, it looks like we're finally going to make it before Christmas - we're set to move on 16 December. Our new house has two huge living rooms, a study, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It's in on e of the villages near Lancaster. From the rear of the house we get fabulous uninterrupted views of the beautiful Lune valley. The village centre is only about 100 yards away, and the whole area is fantastic for going on country walks in lovely scenery. A s you can guess, we're really pleased.

Well, that's the news from us. Hope all goes well with you - keep in touch. Have a very happy Christmas. All good wishes from........... Geraint, Jill and Becky.

-240

�