I have always enjoyed local newspapers. When we were in France the Sud-Ouest, an excellent paper, combined national and local news, so wasn't a local paper like the Hastings & St. Leonard's Observer (take the catchy name, for a start). The Observer, as it is affectionately known locally, is a true local paper full of local stories - what the French press refer to as "faits divers". In the last issue my favourite headline was "Brute jailed for stabbing his fiancée" - the word "brute" being repeated twice in the opening paragraphs. Or possibly "Woman 'hit' man in car park attack", reporting a road rage incident outside a Tesco Express.
And then there are the ads, both commercial and private. My recent favourite was the one-eighth page advertisement with the irresistible invitation: "Get your dentures fixed for Christmas!"
Such is the readership that, after our recent visit to the Met Opera HD transmission of Clemenza di Tito at the local Odeon, where we were part of an audience of 13, I thought it would be a good idea to write to the Observer in order to spread the news of this easy access to opera. So I did, and, bless them, they printed my immortal prose as the second letter on the page, without cuts. We then went to the next HD transmission - this time Verdi's Ballo in Maschera. A headcount of the audience showed we were 12. The Odeon didn't help their cause by having the subtitles in Russian rather than English for the first half, but the singing was still fantastic. This Saturday we have Aida. I may have to leave some leaflets in the Old Town launderette, which seems to be one of the main places for finding out what's on. Watch this space.
Antony Mair
love the blogs keep them up, I am now totally addicted! I would point out that Sud-Ouest is not on a par with the Hastings and St Leonards observer, most french people read a regional and not a national and Sud Ouest is the second largest regional french daily published in Bordeaux, and distributed throughout Aquitaine, and in parts of Poitou-Charentes and Midi-Pyrénées. With a circulation of over 300,000, it is one of the largest French regional dailies.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate the clarification on the Sud-Ouest - although regional in scope, it does have the local central section each day, covering events of the communes in the département concerned (often the opening of a new shop, the arrival of a new head of the gendarmerie, or the retirement of a local councillor) - this means that a Dordogne inhabitant reading the Sud-Ouest in Bordeaux will not learn about what's happening in the Dordogne! I suppose the Dordogne Libre comes closer to a local paper in the true sense. One of the things I enjoyed when travelling in France was the sense of changes in regional identity as a result of the papers - for example, go over the border to the Corrèze and you're suddenly confronted in the shops by "La Montagne", giving that feeling of the Massif Central looming to the north.
DeleteDelighted you enjoy the blog, anyway!