One of the benefits of doing TC on a word-processor is I can keep tweaking things right up until press-time; the rewrite of this editorial was necessary to remove a couple of remarks which had become inaccurate and a little libellous. Also, it lets me tell you Peter Greenaway’s next film is supposed to star NK, but given the large number of films she’s supposed to be in, don’t count on it.

This is TC5, professionally printed once more and with a slight hike in the subscription rate. Oddly, the bigger print run this time made the rise inevitable – while I can take a loss on 50 copies, taking the same loss on 200 is TOO much. Distribution has taken some steps forward since last time. This should be available in Forbidden Planet, London and possibly a few other places as well. It should also be available by mail order from a German company, Artware and Daystar Books too.

What looked like a bit of a struggle getting this issue together petered out to the extent that I’ve effectively been twiddling my thumbs for the past fortnight, it all being ready bar the front cover. I took January off, thinking that I could write the texts in February, forgetting that February only has 28 days, and I’d something arranged for most of them, from the 1st (‘A Clockwork Orange 2004’) to the 28th (the Cramps in concert, after which I ended up in King’s College Hospital getting stitches in my lip!). Fortunately, since the printing of TC now takes a week rather than a month I had enough breathing space to cope.

We’ve started playing with the layout a bit more – this issue is a compromise between those who wanted to get away from the telephone directory look and those who saw it as the first step on the slippery slope towards glossy Freddy Krueger photos. I’m also interested to know whether the type-faces on the Splatterfest piece and the letters page gave you eye-strain – if they didn’t, one or other will be adopted for future issues, which might mean a price REDUCTION, since we can put more information on a page and thus will need to pay for fewer pages, though it’ll probably mean I just waffle on at greater length.

As ever, some things were squeezed out. The competition results (what the entries lacked in quantity they made up in quality) have been held over and the Trash City awards have as well, though since by TC6 it’ll be July and no-one’ll care about ’89 any more, the latter may be dropped. At least we don’t need an annoying supplement.

A few thanks: David Bryan, Damien Drake, Alun Fairburn, David Glance, Des Lewis, John London of Copyprint, Gerard Smith, Frank Stauffer and Steve Welburn.

“For the good of the losers, the boozers, the ugly, the crazy, the drunks & the punks, the perverts, the lazy…”