Two years on, and I'm still bombarded with e-mails from people who have somehow tripped over the concept of Chalkdust and want to be involved. Chalkdust...the backyard in-joke that turned into an international art movement. That kind of enthusiasm doesn't show up every day.

The first thing I feel I should do is to apologise for my long silence on the project. 2004 was a beautiful summer, thanks to all of you and your dedicated friends, and if things had gone a little more smoothly at my end, it would have come to a glorious conclusion. The feedback was unanimous - participants had a blast and painted their towns in a range of pastel shades not only over the month of July, but in some cases until the middle of August. I received - and continued to receive for almost the next year - some dazzling descriptions of your work (but no photographs?! Shame! Shame on all of you, except Stephen and friends in Melbourne - if you read this by any chance, your picture brought some much needed Aussie sunshine to drookit Scotland), and I wish I could have done justice to your hard work with a proper web response. Unfortunately, life doesn't always work out the way you want or expect it to. I won't burden you with what went on in my private life that year, but there was a lot of it and it's probably safe to say that I went a bit crazy for a while back then. In any case, all I can do is apologise. I let the project down, and that's the truth.

The second thing I'm here to say is that Chalkdust is not dead. It's not running this year, but it is not dead - just sleeping. I have one more set of exams to clear, and one crazed summer of financial juggling and possession moving to swing me into university life, and then all of my summertime attentions will be dedicated to the organisation and (yes) publicising of Chalkdust. With you guys behind it, it could be something really big. Let's go for it.