+++Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all Lifers+++

I'll do a 'through the year' article a little later, but on behalf of Lookout and I, we would like to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year period all Lifers and their families.

Its been a challenging year. Our football club is in an awful mess, and coupled with a bleak economic situation its not been the best of backdrops for sustaining a positive and enjoyable forum. Additionally, we also had a major problem with our forum not being able to cope with the level of traffic it was getting. We finally managed to improve that aspect, though our influence on team affairs, interest and inflation rates is sadly limited.

Despite our team continuing in to decline in the past 12 months, in Charlton Life 'world' the last year has seen:

Our membership grow significantly, and with it the traffic of our forum. We now receive traffic-wise in 6 weeks which a year ago we were doing in 6 months.
We successfully managed to continue our very proud links with Demelza, raising money through the Points Competition and our group half marathon, once again beating our fundraising targets.
We also instigated the amazing group bet with Holmesdale.net that very much looks like we're going to have to dip into our pockets for.
We also through our members managed to sponsor to both JonJo Shelvey and Andy Gray this season.
We've held numerous informal drinks, organised a screening of the Play-off final with Sacha Illic guesting
We also organised a cracking coach and day our at Ipswich, despite another poor performance on the road.
We have organised football games for our members against Burnley and Ipswich supporters.
We successfully launched a golf society with Keith Peacock guesting, that will continue to grow in 2009
We had Peter Varney use this outlet to thank fans for his time at the club, and we have also seen one of the Chairman sign up and contribute. Our members have helped make this the place to get informed Charlton opinion, even if it largely moaning of late !
Our weekly Points Prediction Competition continues to grow with each year, with 2008/09 having over 100 participants


Through ups and downs, whether you're a doom and gloomer, or rose-tinted optimist, a right-wing cyclist, or a left-footed vegetarian, we've largely managed to stay with it and respect other people's views, which is essential in any forum being successful.

So thank you to those who have participated or contributed to our fund raising attempts, contributed articles to the Blog, suggested or organised any of the above events, been one of our Admin team who do a really fantastic, and largely unseen and unthankful job in helping us administrate the forum, bought Amazon products through our shop link helping to offset the running costs a little, started discussions, added comments, provided support for someone who posted a problem, or simply lurked in the background....

Thank you all for your commitment and for helping this little outlet of Addickness function successfully, and here's hoping we get a little bit of cheer in 2009 that we all as decent fans so richly deserve.

Charlton till I Die.
Lookout and AFKA