Thank you all for the kind comments
but as I said earlier, I am not the top poster here. Beagle is over 17k posts.
A lot of people have left, but that is just normal and moreover there is a general drift of old-timers away from forums because to a large degree most things have been said already.
What I'd like is to keep this forum useful to others. That is the main use, and is the only
sustainable use of it because there aren't all that many topics to talk about.
The other way to keep a forum going is to turn it into a cliquey pub (like some are) and that would be a shame because those with something interesting to say will definitely depart when that happens. I would certainly clear off because I don't need the internet to "live".
There was Whirlygig and Whirlybird - two different women.