One of the coolest things about Alnwick is that nothing really terrible ever happens here. This causes something of a problem for the Northumberland Gazette, Alnwick's weekly newspaper, in that they are rather short of things to be angry about.
This page is not produced by the Gazette, but gives you some idea of the quality of journalism it produces.

FUN FACTS ABOUT THE GAZETTE:

When its cover price was increased at the start of 1998 it was careful to point out that the Gazette still offered the best value in weekly newspapers in mid-Northumberland. This left everyone scratching their heads and trying to work out what the alternative was.

Also in 1998 it won an award declaring it to be "North East weekly newspaper of the year". To win this award it had to knock its rivals for the title - like the big guns of the Morpeth Herald - into a cocked hat.

Puzzled readers wondered whether the Judges were most influenced by its ditching of the popular weekender section of the paper (which has now sort of returned), the seriousness of its reporting or its fearless coverage of local news.

Here are some of the highlights of 1997-98, through the Gazette's award-winning eyes:

15 August 1997 
A fatal plane crash. "Death crash plane just missed train", rhymes the headline writer, inadvertently, or perhaps just tastelessly.

29 August 1997 
Ronnie Corbett opens the North Sunderland Lifeboat Fete which attracted thousands. Mr Corbett will no doubt be delighted that the Gazette's original and fresh description of him was "Pint-sized superstar".

Elsewhere on the front page it is reported that a local trader is suing the Council over alleged loss of trade whilst works were done outside her shop. Apparently during the works it was so cramped that "Many pedestrians were forced to cue". Thank goodness Alex Higgins didn't hear about it.

12 September 1997 
The first leek show at the Coach Inn, Lesbury produced a big surprise, according to the Gazette, when it was won by the only female entrant, who had entered it for the first time.

3 October 1997 
Front page splash - photograph of five Safeway employees who travelled by train dressed as tarts (so what's the news you might ask). The Gazette carefully lists the names of all SIX persons it says are in the photograph. Still, I 'spect one of them was hiding.

The paper that brings you more news also contains a supplement of all the Leek Club results - together with photographs of all the prize-winning vegetables accompanied by their leeks.

Meanwhile in a story "Success for gun law amnesty" the Gazette prints the frankly implausible Northumbria Police statistic that 100% of newly outlawed weapons in their area have been collected. So, there are no guns of a calibre of more than .22 anywhere in Northumberland or Tyne and Wear! Well done!

Quality Headline of the week: Warning as fears grow for homes in path of ancient stones.

10 October 1997 
Quality Headline of the week: Man angry over damage to school crossing sign

7 November 1997 
The main story is that a motorist was dazzled by a laser pointer. The prominent position in the paper which this receives - the top of page 1 in fact - is of course entirely unrelated to the fact that the injured man is Gazette reporter Robert Brooks. Coincidentally the news story is written by ace Gazette reporter Robert Brooks and includes the following paragraph "he was this week waiting to hear if he will require further specialist eye treatment from the Royal Victoria Infirmary at Newcastle". I thought that describing yourself in the third person was a habit most people grew out of at primary school.

5 December 1997 
An actor in a production at the Alnwick Playhouse dyes his hair blonde; seemingly as a requirement of the rôle he is to play. The Gazette thoughtfully provides before and after pictures of the actor so you can see the effect of the transformation. Or you could, if the "before" picture wasn't in black and white.

19 December 1997 
"Teletubby mania hits Alnwick", a report that a couple queued up outside Woolworths from 1.30am in order to be first to buy a Teletubby that day. They seem to be the only people in the queue, however, and quite why they couldn't have bought one the previous day is nowhere explained. Mania city!

Meanwhile the Gazette's front page crusade against laser pointers continues. This time a woman in Craster calls the police because her cat is having trouble with its eyes and thinks that people could have been shining laser pointers into them. Police are paying close attention to the situation. Understandably.

9 January 1998 
Main headline: "Safeway Decision Drama". The drama is that there is no decision at all.

23 January 1998 
Joint Quality Headline(s) of the week (I couldn't decide, sorry): "Owner finds lorry in living room"; "Alnwick has the finest grand piano in north"

30 January 1998 
First edition of the Gazette following a "major redesign". The major redesign seems to involve the replacement of the Old English font on the masthead with a slightly different Old English font. And: out goes the strange red blob on the masthead which no one could work out what it was and in comes a pink square with a lion in it.

13 February 1998 
A positive feature about the Council's listed building management service.

20 February 1998 
Oops! Did we give the impression that listed building management was alright? The Alan Castle column pitches in on the other side "We are not living in a museum … [plastic windows] look good, cost a lot, are double glazed and are nearly maintenance free… If man had never progressed … then [er]… surely we would all be living in caves", he coherently argues.

The Gazette, always big enough to admit when it is wrong, prints a correction admitting that the time of a crime committed in Amble was 8.45am and not 8.15am as they had previously reported.

27 March 1998 
Front page news: "Swan killed on electricity line" Apparently the death is being investigated by Police who would not appear to have anything better to do than arrange for post mortems of dead swans. The results show that the bird flew into electricity wires which is good because at first they thought it might have been shot(!) The Police say that this is the third time that a swan has flown into a local power line in recent years and that they are going to tell Northern Electric about how dangerous electricity wires are to swans.

1 May 1998 
The Gazette's intriguing main headline is "FAMOUS CRASTER KIPPERS SURVIVE BLAZE" which is impressive since presumably they were dead before being placed in the smoke house.

Turning to page three; the Gazette reports, using entirely neutral language, the fact that the Council, like virtually every other, engages in pest control measures which include pigeon culls. "ALNWICK Council marksmen will continue to pick off pigeons" explains the first sentence, without resorting to hyperbolic language, even for a second.

Meanwhile, a classified ad is placed for a local resident who is celebrating his 100^th birthday. The Gazette gives the classified ad its own section entitled "Mother's Day Greetings". Most appropriate!

8 May 1998 
"Safeway loyalty card anger" is the page three story - apparently someone had an entitlement to six ABC points - with a total street value of 6p - but had forgotten her card. She tried to give them to a little old lady who was next in the queue but heartless Safeway officials told them that this was against company policy, apparently on the grounds that if the old lady got the points then Safeway might send her details about the wrong special offers(!). This injustice provokes local columnist Alan Castle to question the whole loyalty card business; loyalty cards, he claims are "cunning tool[s] of market analysis and manipulation… the more you look at it the more paranoid it makes you". Indeed.

The Gazette's own haute cuisine expert Jill Harrison reviews a restaurant, giving special mention to the "horse d'oeuvres", which is nice.

29 May 1998 
Alan Castle's editorial on the Council complains that politics has reared its head in the Council (as if it is unusual for councils to be political). These days, he adds, "each looks after there[sic] own".

5 June 1998 
There is a brilliant feature on the Alnwick Writers' Group in which the founder is quoted as saying "There is a lot of writing out there which is mediocre and I think it is such a shame when you get someone with a genuine talent but who keeps it to themselves". Does he have any particular mediocre writing in mind, one wonders? The mental picture of the group's founder dictating this to the Gazette reporter who enthusiastically nods in agreement and then asks "how do you spell 'mediocre' again?" is very pleasing. But of course I'm sure that never happened.

Also, a slightly surreal comment by Alan Castle. Felton, it seems, is getting a new letter box because the old one kept getting full. Mr C wonders if the post box is full because people are sending stained glass windows or self-portraits through the post(?). Joking aside (or at least I think it was a joke), he says how nice it is to see that even with today's electronic wizardry people are still communicating with the written word. This is a rather odd comment since the posting of stained glass windows does not involve the written word whereas most electronic forms of communication do.

26 June 1998 
The Duke, apparently needing to redress the bad press he's getting (although the Gazette haven't actually done much that you could really describe as anti-Duke), hits back by issuing a press release giving a glowing account of himselfo which the Gazette turns into a front page story. To assuage His Grace still further the paper backs this up with a leader which contains the statement that the Duke "makes his point, and makes it strongly and few would argue that he is right". I would have much more respect for the Gazette if I thought the ambiguity was deliberate.

17 July 1998 
Under the headline "Zippity Dudah" the Gazette reports that Mr Dudah, a student at Edinburgh Napier University is fined for speeding by Alnwick Magistrates. Which is actually quite funny.

24 July 1998 
A silly row about whether or not there's a leader of the Council. The putative leader writes to the Gazette saying that "The suggestion that just because the leader of Northumberland County Council was reportedly paid £31,000 in expenses this year, this might equally apply at Alnwick District is ludicrous".

For some reason this seems to send the paper into a fit of apoplexy:
"Coun. Davidson should have read the Alan Castle note [NOTE?] more carefully. It stated 'the county council has just paid up a total of £31,000 in expenses and other payments to its last leader for a year in office before he was ousted. That could have kept at least one amenity site open.
'I hope our our representatives on Alnwick District Council are not thinking in extra payment terms for our leader. The county council does it so It must right.'
Nowhere did we suggest that Coun Davidson would get £31,000. EDITOR"
Apart from the three typos in the second paragraph of that quotation (I have faithfully reproduced them), it seems to me that Coun. Davidson was right - there was a question asked wondering whether or not ADC might be thinking of paying its leader £31,000. You may think that all Cllr Davidson was doing was stating that there was no chance of him getting £31,000 which seems to be a fair thing to say. A case of pot calling the kettle black, I think; perhaps the Editor should have read (a) his own article and (b) Davidson's letter more carefully.

Front page news: Following on from the acclaimed story about the new letter box in Felton, the Gazette reports the exciting news that an Alnwick Postman is driving a mini from Italy to Brighton.

31 July 1998 
Goodness! More postal news! Now we discover that the pillar box outside the Wine Cellar has been repainted and the postal worker who repaints it has to take a photograph of his handiwork. Apparently this is for evidential purposes so that if anyone sues saying that they weren't warned about the wet paint the PO can whip out the photos and prove them wrong! This newsworthy postal mayhem makes the Gazette wonder what the world is coming to. The only winner in this sort of thing are the lawyers, it opines. I imagine that those who have got compensation are winners too, but not according to the Gazette.

Alan Castle decides to write about the weather, "working on the principal [sic] that every time you write about the weather it changes immediately".

7 August 1998 
Continuing with its strangely comprehensive coverage of postal matters in Mid-Northumberland the Gazette reports the exciting news that a new service has been introduced for "Northumberland holidaymakers". For a fee the Royal Mail won't deliver your post for two weeks. News City!

In what is obviously a rich week for news, the Gazette reports that a 35p pint of milk has been stolen from someone's doorstep in Amble.

Quality Headline of the week: Seahoues go for record margin (they mean Seahouses though). 

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