It goes something like this: I had a database of all my Giles books, along with dates covered and a brief description of the covers. I stored this on my PDA, so that when ferreting around second-hand bookshops or impulse buying on Ebay, I could see which books I was missing.
When I upgraded my PDA to something with a HTML viewer, I decided to update the database by scanning all the covers, just because I thought it would look cute. My ultimate aim was to turn it into a proper website. I'd done about a dozen books before I found a rather marvellous website someone else had done, with a very similar layout. It was considerably better and more complete than I ever intended mine to be.
Despite this - and despite completing my collection of annuals and so making the list redundant - I chose to soldier on and scan the remaining books. I'm quite pleased with it all really.
I'll dig the address out of the better site and put it up here shortly - but I assure you that the similarities are coincidental!
Lots of thanks should go to my family and friends who
have spent many years 'keeping an eye out' for Giles annuals
for me.
Special thanks go to Phil Crathorne, who bought me two
Giles Annuals from a cafe-bookshop in Wales because "Well,
they were only a pound each". They turned out to be
Series 4 and 5, in a condition which would probably fetch
about 100 pounds each on Ebay. I'd heard about this sort of
thing happening, but it had never happened to me before ...