Tuesday 2 October 2012

Slowing down the blog

Wow. It's been a week between blogposts on here, which I think is the longest gap I've ever had since the site started one morning in November 2008. I started the blog after coming across a homeless man who'd lain on the ground outside the then Shepherd's Bush library for most of the night, as people just walked past him.

By the time I tried to wake him, on instructions from the 999 operator I'd called, he'd started to show signs of hypothermia and the paramedics who arrived packed him straight off to hospital. There was something about that which made me take up this site, and it's been a unique experience ever since - one which has taken me on the streets with the police, down into underground sewers and to numerous shouty angry meetings at Hammersmith Town Hall. I've met some inspirational people quietly doing amazing things and seen both the best and the worst of our borough.

This isn't building up to announcing a stop to the blog, but it is a recognition that things are going to slow down from now on. As some of you on Twitter might have noticed I've started another one dealing with the day job that I do and that takes time, as does the day job itself. Put a part time masters degree into the mix and then the various stuff that life throws up and this site is going to have to take a back seat more regularly from now on.

But there are some big stories still round these ere parts and I plan to keep following them. This Saturday's march to save our hospitals, the battle over the West Ken redevelopment, the future of the Goldhawk Road and our market among them. And, sadly, serious crime looks like it isn't going away any time soon.

So for those of you that send me news, keep sending it and I'll report on it. For those of you organising events, such as the forthcoming Oxjam, do the same. And for those of you who keep coming back you're still more than welcome. But I did just want to own up to being a bit slower from now on.

3 comments:

  1. Given how successful your blog has become, have you considered getting more people to contribute directly and you keep an oversight function?

    It would be a shame if this blog would no longer be the excellent source of local information it is.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for that - I have suggested it in the past and more than open to it now!

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  2. Best of luck, Chris. Thanks a lot for your hard - and unpaid - work to help cut through the bullsh*t that's fed to us, and to alert us to the wonderful and dreadful things going on in our midst.

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