Our Best Reporter Introduces Herself, At Length

As promised last Monday, the Herald is introducing its staff. The editor asked me to do it because, in his words, I was already in the building, which is how every decision here is made. I have placed myself first on merit and the others can wait their turn.

Margaret Pinnock, Village Life. That is me. I cover whichever page needs me, which is all of them, and I have held opinions about the WI since before some of its members were born. I am not prepared to soften them here or anywhere else.

I cross stitch. People say that like it is a gentle hobby. I have broken three hoops this year and I finished a cottage scene at two in the morning in a state no cottage has ever produced in anybody. The robin on it is looking the wrong way on purpose and I would do it again.

I smoked eighty a day for most of my adult life and stopped by swapping them for five packets of Polos, which I now get through before lunch. My dentist has stopped saying anything and simply looks at me the way you look at weather coming in off the Vale. Bruce, my dog, has learned the sound of the wrapper and has given up his entire inner life to it.

I also buy things and send them back. Not occasionally. I have a drawer of returns labels and a working relationship with the man at the Parkway collection point who has never once asked why a woman needs four identical coats in four identical colours. The honest answer is that the buying is the bit I enjoy and the keeping has never interested me at all.

I should say where all this happens, because the editor will not. The Herald is produced from an outhouse in a garden near St Mary's church, a building that was a lavatory within living memory and has not entirely let go of the idea. There is a desk where the thing used to be. I have asked for a window that opens and been told the budget is committed elsewhere, which in this paper means somebody bought a kettle.

The rest of the staff get their turn next week, and they know it, and two of them have already started preparing. Nigel has a folder. Think about that for a moment, then go on with your day.