Leaving an Impression

Phone hacking, newspaper closures, police corruption, dodgy journalists, supine politicians … it’s been an exciting week for news. One story has dominated the headlines on the back of underhand journalistic practices.

Over on my own newspaper, things are a little less exciting. Not only can I confirm that no one in the newsroom has ever hacked someone else’s phone, many of them have trouble logging into the editorial computer. If someone has lost the post-it note with the password, we’re all doomed.

So no phone hackery for this week’s front page. But lurking within the the pages of The Westmorland Gazette, were a couple of stories which caught the cartoon eye.

The first is a new initiative to rent electric bikes in the Lake district. There are charge points being established throughout South Lakes and the bikes are already for hire.

In other news, a family came home from holiday to discover the shape of an owl on their French windows. Most of us just find Jesus in our toast but this was an astonishingly clear image, caused by the dust on the tawny owl’s feather imprinting on the glass. No sign of the owl, so they assumed it recovered and flew off (I suspect a well-fed fox).

So these are the ideas I pitched. And in answer to Martin Lewes, ace reporter for BBC Radio Cumbria, the decision about which cartoon to use is not made by either white or black smoke from the editor’s office. Instead, a bar of Kendal Mint Cake is thrown from an upstairs window. White and it gets in, chocolate covered and it’s rejected.

You can see which got the white mint cake by visiting my website on Thursday morning.