It came as something of a shock to realise recently that it is twenty years since the first issue of Chipperfield News saw the light of day in October 1988 under my optimistic guidance as editor. I had never tried my hand at journalism before, but found it a very rewarding and enjoyable, though time-consuming occupation .
The village was blessed with a minister, the Reverend Arthur Ellery, who had the gift of picking up suggestions and enabling the parish to bring them to fruition. To his support and encouragement we owe not only our regular village newsletter, delivered to our door free of charge, but also the services of Chipperfield Care, another well established village institution.
Over the years it has been fascinating to discover the talents and activities sheltered in the village. One of the first surprises was to discover just how many clubs and societies were flourishing, sometimes hardly known of except to their members. Other stories came to light, such as Colonel Bob Morkills buccaneering description of his exploits as a young member of the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War, when he navigated his way across Europe with the aid of a map purloined from a copy of the Daily Mail. Another village resident proved something of a poet and entertained us with far-fetched stories of the origins of village street names, happily believed by some of our readers.
In those far-off days of 1988 the only person to use a computer was Debbie,who typed up and printed off all the copy, which I then painstakingly cut and pasted onto the format. Geoff Bryant our then business manager looked after our finances while Bill Yates conjured up our first advertisers. Finally, the invaluable Carl Perkins was our printer, who whisked the paste-up away and turned it into clean and tidy copies ready for delivery. This fearsome task was taken on at somewhat short notice by the intrepid Ruth Hare, who managed to organise an efficient framework for delivery to the whole village in an amazingly short time – and it is still continuing, with occasional new recruits here and there. When after eight years or so I felt it was time for a change of editor I suggested that the job would be better split between two people, which allows for holidays and also more continuity if one editor wishes to resign. This caused some consternation for poor Geoff, as he had to finance two computers rather than the one he had budgeted for, but somehow he managed to wave a magic wand and nowadays the two editors are computerised and all seems to run like clockwork with many contributions from around the village.
So next time you pick up your copy of Chipperfield News from the doormat, do spare a thought for all the people whose time and effort brought it about, and are still active on the job.
Sally Main