Thanks for the memories (From Stroud News and Journal)

Thanks for the memories

BY the time most of you read this I will be gone. At 12 noon today my tenure at the SNJ comes to an end.

But there will be no tears, no backward glances because there is really nothing to be sorry about.

I meant to stay a year, instead stayed almost two beguiled as I was by this wonderful, quirky, warm and welcoming town. Now it is time to say farewell.

Here in the compact wonderland that is the Five Valleys I have learnt my trade as a reporter, setting out as wet-behind-the-ears trainee in May 2003 and departing 22 months later a grizzled and fully qualified senior reporter. The district has tested my mettle in every way, challenged my abilities every day.

It yields up a quality and quantity of stories inversely proportionate to its size, it is a crucible brimming with life and diversity, opinions and events.

Sometimes I have come up trumps, other times I have fallen short but always I have learned another lesson.

My would-be replacements have engulfed the SNJ with applications - more than 70 flooded into the editor in a matter of weeks for a single trainee position here.

The SNJ is a paper with a fighting heart and a fiercely loyal readership at the heart of a community that claims it as its own.

It's is the kind of paper we all want to work for. I did, now it is someone else's turn. Thanks for the memories, Stroud.