Happy New Year!

From the place where Mary and Frederik met, it is already 2009! Photo: Craig Greenhill/The Daily Telegraph

It is time to wish you all a Happy New Year! This is the anniversary of our third year, although many a loyal reader might have doubted the blog this year. As I have told many of you who have been kind and concerned and sent emails, this blog is a spare time activity, and real life does get 'in the way' at times. This has definitely been the case this year. We are still catching up back here, the many missing posts about DRF activities will appear eventually and we will let you know about them in a 'Dear readers...' post in the future. We do like to maintain the blog as an English language record of fact as far as possible. Thanks too to readers who have taken us past three million visits and five million page views - it is your interest which motivates our commitment to the blog. Thanks also to the Danish media which allows us to highlight their stories, photos and video/news clips.

As always, there are many friends of the blog to thank who make many things possible. It takes quite a community of people from all over the world to dig up information, links, photos, scans and videos in all sorts of corners, especially in Danish, for those who do not understand the language. A huge thanks go to the efforts of Valentine, jema, cph, Riki, bonsai, FrederikIX, Benedikte, ambiDK, mayflower, Tamriko, Leonie and gudinde. A special thanks must go to Muhler, for lots of stuff, always.

So here's to the New Year! It may be a difficult year for many because of the economic crisis, here is hoping that wise decisions protect us from the worst. Crown Princess Mary's trip to Uganda has shown there are always places where people have very hard lives indeed, and this is not a bad thought on which to end 2008. We should never be blind to the suffering of others, or to the possibility that it is within our capability to do something about it.

...and vale Jørn Utzon, who died a month ago - an enduring link between Australia and Denmark:
Sydney Opera House tributes
The Sydney Morning Herald 'Joern Utzon dead'
Artdaily.org "...The overrun and the scandal it created kept Utzon from building more masterpieces. This, according to Flyvbjerg, is the real cost of the Sydney Opera House..."
New York Times
London Times

Sydney Morning Herald Sydney fireworks gallery
The Daily Telegraph Sydney NYE 2009 gallery

Dear readers...

Thanks to all devoted readers for hanging in there and continuing to check the blog. And thanks to many of you who have taken the time to email. We are still here, just busy with real life. Much as we like to keep things updated this is an amateur blog done in spare time only. We will catch up, but begin gradually and then go backwards (well, I know what I mean!). I will get all in order in time and introduce a few new features in the next little while. Happy reading!

Dear reader

A little note just to let you know there will be a little posting hiatus for the next few days. Sorry the catch up hasn't been quite as fast as hoped but it just can't be helped. But, we will get there and be back on top for upcoming events. See you soon!

Dear reader

It will not have escaped the attention of regular readers that lately we have not been as up to date as we would like. We will be posting to catch up in the next few days and then we will slot posts back into chronological order after there has been a chance to read them.

Many thanks for emails enquiring about the blog and thanks too to our thousands of regular readers who persevere checking the blog for new posts every day. Reader loyalty has taken us well past 2 million visits and 3.5 million page views. As they say on television stations when they lose the transmission: "We are sorry for this interruption...". Thanks as always to the many friends of the blog who help with so many things, including info, links, pics and translations. Happy reading! Although most of you will already know it all, we like to keep the record of events and happenings straight.

Dear readers ...

It should be a truth universally acknowledged that there is some sort of 3 dimensional real life for your trusty bloggers outside the 2 dimensional walls of the blog. As many of you know, we do this blog in our free time and we have some catching up to do. Thank you to our many, many readers who have contacted us to ask how we are - "both very fine thank you". This is to let you know we will have a number of catch up posts coming up and then we have a photocall at Gråsten Palace to look forward to, Farr 40 racing in Copenhagen and back into the post summer swing of things after that. Get ready for a lot of catching up!

And also to you our readers, thanks for making this the little Danish royalty watching blog that could. We recently passed more than one million visits and nearly double that number of page views. We didn't expect the blog to take on quite such a life of its own, but it has. We are indebted to the many Danish and other media sources which are tolerant of us posting material, translating and linking to them. From what our readers tell us, it is much appreciated by non-Danish speakers who follow the Danish royal family.

We must also thank the many, many friends of the blog who help us with information of all kinds. We are sure you must know who you are - your efforts are always much appreciated. We cannot finish without a huge thanks to some especially close friends who help with translating. And here a special mention must go to Muhler, who is our own Danish 'kong' of translation, and long may he reign!