I am one of those people who finds it almost impossible to throw things away. Carol often decides to chuck something away and replace it with something new (so far, I have survived).If I don't cry, then I get hold of the old thing and put it in my shed. For, you never know, 'it might come in useful' one day.

There is little chance that these Archives will 'come in useful', except as a reminder of how ignorant of web design and naive I was then and so, also, to let me know that I must strive to do better now.

No, where any usefulness does come is in the way that the later editions (where the community started taking a hand in providing the content) will illustrate to future generations, how we lived today. History is all about going back to the original sources but, rather than accepting what is said, trying to understand why it was said in the environment that existed then.

If our Archives show that we were interested in, say, cancer charity runs, or funding carnivals, this will tell history that our generation did not fully fund cancer research out of the public purse or that part of our entertainment consisted in people dressing up and driving around on tractor drawn floats.

It was some time after I started to prepare this June 2004 edition of the site that I realised that it was something of an anniversary. Although I started playing with web sites that eventually became Beacon Villages a bit earlier, it was in June 2003 that I first launched www.south-zeal.co.uk, as a resource for the whole community. As I sit here and type this, I can see on my wall, copies of the press release that were printed in the "Western Morning News" (June 5th), the Okehampton Times (June 12th) and Admart (June ?). They all say basically that I was going to put the site up and stand back and let the rest of the community take it over. You get what I mean about being naive?

By October, having had some success in getting overseas people to look at the site, I was despairing of any local interest and decided to try and produce some by adding a monthly Journal. This, at least, brought me some assistance in getting news from our village correspondents and it does appear to have awakened a bit of local interest.

Since then the site content format has remained pretty much the same, only the appearance (and, I hope, the loading speed) have been improved. But, I am biased, judge for yourself. But remember - reminiscence is a thing of the past!