Anyway - there is supposed to be a ban on none essential roadworks in Cheltenham during race week for obvious reasons. It's the busiest time of the year and if we have jack hammers going off everywhere it doesn't paint a very good picture of the town. Now for some reason (the council claim no responsibility of course) roadworks were allowed to go ahead on Grosvenor Street which is less than 50 yards from the High Street on the two busiest days of the week... Ladies Day and the legendary Gold Cup race day... ahhhh haaa! Balls up me thinks? Yeahhhh...
So, being a resident on that street I thought it might be worth a mention to the news desk... what can the harm be? Well they loved it and sent me out to cover the story. ACE.
Now define "none essential" - well local business Pops Home Brew had requested the work to take place eight months ago, they were told the dates three weeks ago... not their fault it's on race week of course but they failed to let some of the surrounding businesses know about the work until the contractors EON turned up on Thursday.
But some of the businesses on the road (mainly those who provide meals) were up in arms about it, Partners Catering claimed they were 75% down on last years race week takings because the noise was so bad and the floors were vibrating. Cafe owner Jakki Randle said: "It was like a mass evacuation, customers just don't want to eat with all that noise."
Claiming that the area was like a community of small businesses she was disappointed that her neighbors hadn't had the "common courtesy" to let her know what was going on before hand.
And enter my first official, what can only be described as an angry confrontation, as a journalist. I decided that I was going to speak to Pops Home Brew about what was going on, this was of course in the interest of acquiring a balanced story - har har - no such luck! I was verbally attacked by them and told I was aggravating the situation by reporting on it... hmm but wait a minute... this story wasn't about them being the villains because they'd asked for the work to be done - it was about the council dropping the ball on the roadworks ban on race week. So this leads to a crying woman (not me) claiming she wanted to "enforce one of those press gags" - because we all know that worked amazingly for Trafigura, and anyway that's beside the point... it's a local newspaper and the story wasn't about them. Anyway after not much look I left the shop feeling rather frustrated by the fact I'd given them the opportunity to comment and been slapped in the face with it.
So I got back to the news room and wacked out a 550 word piece that was set to be the page 3 lead for Saturday's paper. EPIC! I've now been told the story has been bumped down to page 4 but HEY! I'm pretty impressed and feel rather accomplished!
When I was leaving the office today everybody was lovely! They have all said how well I'd done and if I ever wanted to go back I was more than welcome to come back to them. Tanya gave me a nice little confidence booster saying that the Echo very rarely have work experience get page leads let alone page 4 leads, so that was great!
Roll on my week with the Liverpool Post in June! :)
Below are pictures of the roadworks, they were taken by Real Burger owner Andrew Shelfer.
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