Normal service and the jovial smile should resume before Christmas! We continue to be plagued by the problems of specifying correctly the new membership database, but many members will have seen signs of recent progress when we were able to produce subscription requests for the 9 months between February and October 2004; your early return of these forms will help the cash flow greatly! October will also see (I trust!) the beginning of the grand catch up with processing all gifts, sending out long overdue thank you letters, and reclaiming nearly £100,000 in Gift Aid tax, thank you Mr Brown. Thank you for your patience in all of this and your generous support of the Fellowship.

The financial challenges remain however, with increased expenditure to cover this year and beyond, the absorption of the MMA activity and their significant resources into the accounts of the Fellowship, and their wise use under the immediate control of the newly formed International HealthServe Committee, and then the 2004 accounts and 2005 budgets to prepare. Then roll on 2005 and the long awaited implementation of direct debit to streamline and automate many of our processes, and the smile will have returned fully! It has certainly not been dull in the CMF office in 2004!

Giles Rawlinson