Court room chuckles

ONE thing that often amazes me about court reporting is the amount of humour on show. OK, I know Britain is a witty place to live in where banter and jokes play a key part in daily life…but surely court would be exempt from such niceties. The first time I noticed such joviality was this summer when I covered the Gary Hardy drugs trial. Throughout the case members of the jury, the lawyers, the judge and even various defendants including Gary Hardy himself would break out in chuckles. On one memorable occasion the whole court roared in laughter as a witness with a good sense of humour moved away from giving evidence into a near comedy routine, until he was halted in his tracks by the smirking judge who realised the seriousness of the court setting. On a daily basis I was always left suprised at the happy nature of Gary Hardy, who regularly laughed and joked with security staff guarding him in the dock, despite the seriousness of the charges he faced. Well I know if that had been me I’d have gone into a shell of self-pity and refused to talk to anyone. And yet again the presence of court humour became apparent during the closing stages of the Peter Smith murder trial this week. Whilst in full swing of summing up the evidence, Judge His Honour Stephen Kramer QC momentarily lost his trail of thought and also his notes much to the amusement of the jury and lawyers. Earlier the judge and prosecutor Peter Joyce QC were both struck down by prolonged coughing fits to the general titters of all in the court room. It doesn’t take much to make us laugh. Yes, Britain really is a funny old place to live in.

Making the most of Ashfield’s natural delights

MOVES to hand Annesley Colliery back into the hands of the community is excellent news for the Ashfield public.

The iconic colliery sits as a symbol of the district’s once-proud heritage, used by dog walkers and nature lovers and a site that could be used to far greater potential with the right management and financial investment.

As life continues to get more hectic and stressful the need for spots of seclusion and relaxation grows in importance.

Ashfield is currently blessed with a number of excellent beauty spots, including Brierley Forest Park and the vast surrounding countryside. Annesley Colliery could become the crowning jewel.

With correct investment the colliery complex could become a fantastic nature reserve, bringing new tourists and much-needed revenue into the district to ramble and enjoy the wide variety of wildlife who now call the colliery home.

I, for one, hope that this ambitious plan eventually realises its full potential. Let us all hope Annesley Colliery is about to thrive once again.

The progression of Ashfield

AS the so-called credit crunch continues to bite harder and harder many local council authorities are now feeling the pinch and cutting back.

But here in Ashfield, this worrying trend has been well and truly reversed with the successful completion of Sutton’s new £16m Lammas Leisure Centre.

The state-of-the-art building features a ’wishlist’ of fantastic facilities for the district’s budding sports stars and will provide a lasting sports legacy in the area for many generations to come.

The sports centre now sits proudly in Sutton and is a great credit to all involved in the project, who showed amazing vision, drive and determination in seeing the 18-month project through.

And of course the leisure centre will provide a series of positive knock-on effects, helping boost Ashfield’s seriously flagging health levels and give the district’s youngsters something positive to turn their attentions to.

It is only fitting that someone of Dame Kelly Holmes’s national fame will open the centre to the public on the 1st November.

So once again, well done to everyone who helped pull the project off. Let’s hope it is the first of many positive improvements to hit Ashfield in the coming years.

A media scrum

WORKING on a local newspaper is not all about neighbourhood disputes, council stories and run-of-the-mill issues, occasionally we get the pleasure of working on massive national stories.

And this week it was my turn to be part of the national media scrum thanks to golden girl Rebecca Adlington’s belting swim in the Beijing Olympics.

The swim will never be forgotten by Becky, and covering the event will also not be forgotten by me for a long time.

I awoke at 7am to a text message from the deputy editor asking me to go to the Adlington house to get all the reaction, it was clear it was not just a normal day and a normal story.

Once at the family house, the joy felt by Becky’s parents and sisters was clear for all to see. It was also something that was impossible not to get caught up in as the delight transferred to the assembled media.

To be honest I love sport at the best of times, but to work on a story of this importance to the nation’s sporting aspirations was a true pleasure. It  was also a novel experience having to fight for time with the television big wigs for a few precious moments with the family.

It is also quite an interesting experience to cover a story and then see how the rival media organisations go about doing the same task, do they have the same interviews? the same angle? and could I have done anything better?

Hopefully I will experience the same enjoyment as well as Becky later this week when she claims more Olympic gold.

Courtroom coverage…the juggling act

ONE of the hardest aspects of covering major court cases is the balancing act between staying in the courtroom and getting back to the office.

With so much potential news stories and background material being unearthed on a daily basis it is often both easy and tempting to stay for long periods in court, at the cost of the day-to-day stories needed to fill the rest of the paper.

Personally I find myself worrying that if I don’t stay in court as much as possible I will miss some crucial element of the proceedings.

But the truth of the matter is it is pretty much impossible to be in court all the time, it is pretty much impossible to report on everything that happens and it is pretty much impossible to sit and concentrate on every detail every day for nine weeks.

And despite spending nearly every day in court for the last three weeks I still managed to miss a major report on a witness claiming he was paid to guard £30m worth of drugs, so I guess the morale of the story is, you can’t do it all.

But it was indeed rather frustrating to see that particular report on the front of the Nottingham Evening Post and realise I had missed out on a gem of a story, despite all my recent efforts.

Really, all that you can do as a reporter is manage your time effectively, covering the early parts of the trial when the main details and all the juicy facts are uncovered and then dip in and out of the hearing as and when an important event or witness enters the court arena.

It is a difficult juggling act, but a skill that becomes much easier as the trial slowly grinds on and on.

Courtroom drama . . . it’s better than Taggart

Major court reporting is without doubt the most exciting part of being a journalist and better than any television drama.

Watching the Gary Hardy trial unfold at Nottingham Crown court has been a real pleasure for me and certainly better than anything Taggart or Poirot can serve up.

Looking at the case from the eyes of just a normal man on the street the evidence dished up has been gripping, thrilling, emotional and tense. The future lives of all those involved has already been changed forever or will soon be changed and it is hard not to be caught up in that drama.

As a journalist the case is the perfect professional opportunity for me to work on a major story and to stamp my own personal authority on the Chad coverage.

Even at this early stage it is clear there is a virtually unlimited number of stories flowing from the proceedings, and while it is a big challenge to cover all that goes on each day it is certainly hugely exciting to be at the cutting edge of journalism.

The days have been long and intense and my patience and concentration has often been stretched (along with my wrist and my biro) but the coverage in the Chad, even if I do say so myself, has been excellent and something I am rather proud of.

So what does the typical court day involve?. All being well court begins at 10.30am when the evidence of the first witness is unleashed and my pen leaps into action. Usually each witness throws up a number of stories in each session leaving with me with the often interesting challenge of writing three or four stories during the lunch interval, while trying to juggle my notepad and my cheese sandwhich.

It is then up to me to ring the stories through to our main Mansfield office for one of the other unlucky reporters to take down and file through for our regular internet updates – a process which can often be rather tricky thanks to the frequent bangs, creaks and noises of doors, people and workmen in the court building.

After a quick ten-minute breather the madness of court once again leaps into action and the process is repeated all over again, leaving me to file another one or two stories to keep the news-hungry Chad.co.uk readers happy during the afternoon before I drag my weary body back home.

So while my wrist and brain will no doubt be rather happy when the case ends, I myself will miss the professional buzz the trial has brought me . . . luckily for me I still have another two months to savour.

Courtroom Craziness

FOR a person like myself who has no patience at the best of times, court reporting can be quite the challenge.

The biggest task in fact is not the actual court reporting (something I generally find easy and enjoyable) but the tedious challenge of killing time and managing the boredom as I wait for the case to get underway or reconvene after lunch or one of the many interruptions.

And this particular element of court reporting is something I find the most frustrating.

Indeed the prospect of sitting re-reading a book on WW1 that I’ve already read three times before (probably whilst waiting during a previous trial) or listening to the rather entertaining Notes From A Small Island on my MP3 player for the 19th time is not a pleasant thought.

And this week I have once again come face-to-face with my own courtroom craziness as a rather important drugs trial, which is expected to last between six and ten weeks, finally got underway.

Thankfully court reporting for me has once saving grace. Though the hours of waiting may be as dull as the sky over Lapland in winter, the journalistic rewards are there for all to see.

Through that dullness is one shining light….the chance to work on a massive story and to bag the front page that everyone wants to read.

And though the end of the case remains many moons away, I couldn’t help but sit there like an exciting child waiting to open his Christmas presents as the lawyers massed and the case officially opened.

Now let us all pray that the solitude doesn’t drive me mad before the case concludes.

 

 

News Flow

Each week it is possible to guage just how good the content quality of the Ashfield Chad for the week will be as early as Friday.

A busy Friday and a steady stream of news over the weekend means we are likely to have a full paper, packed with quality news and plenty of stories to entertain and inform our readers….but a quiet Friday followed by a dead weekend can certainly leave us struggling.

And this week was just one of those week. Come Friday the phones were quiet, the email flow of news virtually non existant and this week’s edition was still sparse to say the least.

Fear not, we will be saved by what happens over the weekend and on Monday ….or so I thought. Monday again remained quiet and unless we took decisive action then the Ashfield Chad would be a pityful publication this week.

So what do we as journalists in the Ashfield newsroom do to rectify the sorry situation in such circumstances? Well we work super hard of course to find stories to fill the paper with.

When we are devoid of dramatic court, inquests and calls stories (police, fire and ambulance activity) the best place to go is to the grass roots and community stories. The best place to get that is of course councillors who are out there on a daily basis with their fingers on the pulse of all things Ashfield.

And after enough phone calls to leave my finger-tips a tad on the sore side we came up trumps, with a steady flow of stories about new play areas, flower gardens and community carnivals. Ok, not the most interesting perhaps, but still crucial to people of the district.

So hopefully come Wedensday our efforts will help make this week’s Ashfield Chad once again another must-read for everyone connected with the district.

Help preserve Newstead Abbey

CALLS have been made this week to do more to promote and preserve Newstead Abbey, and I couldn’t agree more.

North Nottinghamshire is blessed with many excellent tourist attractions and areas of natural beauty, and Newstead Abbey is up there with the best of them.

The Abbey represents the nation’s glorious past, it represents history… above all it is a site of national heritage that we must all be very proud off and must maintain for generations to come.

We ALL must do more. But what can we do to help make the most of the wonderful abbey? I’m just one person, what can I do I hear you all cry?….well for one thing, visit it. If we all visited the attraction more often the surge in visitor numbers would help address the shortfall between what is needed to maintain the abbey and how much money is available to finance the repairs.

An increase in interest and visitor numbers would also surely give a little nudge to the powers-that-be at Nottingham City Council. More interest equals more desire and more effort to promote the abbey and pour funds into its coffers.

Of course the public cannot do it all themselves, and more vision is needed from Nottingham City Council and other interested organisations.

More must be done to build on the name of Lord Bryon, more must be done to attract more regular avenues of funding such as concerts, school educational events, attractions in the ground.

More must be done to make people want to step onto the Abbey. The Abbey has stood in all its glory for hundreds of years and has even withstood a civil war, what a crying shame it would be if our generation could not protect the abbey as our ancestors once did.

Olympic dreams

So Ashfield is set to be an Olympic venue……ok it’s not the host city, but it’s a start.

Athletes from across the globe will now gather to put the finish touches to their preparations for the London 2012 games at Ashfield School’s spanking running track. And what a big lift it will give to our district.

The news means youngsters from Ashfield will get a first hand glimpse of the world’s best athletes and can feel part of the Olympic dream.

The Olympic dream of course has to start somewhere. Seb Coe didn’t just become a world class athlete from nowhere and who knows, maybe the visit of athletes will set a young Ashfield competitor on the road to future Olympic glory.

But even if that is not the case, Ashfield has been put on the map and can now feel a genuine part of the most famous games in the world….it is not just a London event, it is now a national spectacular.

And great credit for this must, of course, go to headteacher Ian Fraser and other staff members at the school who helped make this possible.

For without their wonderful work and dedication to bring the state-of-the-art facility to the school, none of this would be possible.

Thanks to their commitment, Ashfield now has a facility to be proud of, a facility to encourage sportsmen and woman of the future and a lasting legacy for the school.

The 2012 games will be a great success….and I’m sure the Olympic visit to Ashfield will go down just as well.