Changes Start with... THE SPARK "at the heart of the alternative west country"
Part of a community
Having recently moved from Bristol to near Stroud, I’ve had a real sense of returning home. I’ve always been a country boy – born and reared on the gorgeous grey-green shores of Strangford Lough in County Down – but I have lived almost my entire life since the age of 18 in cities, some of them huge and sprawling like Bangkok and Berlin, others more compact like Cork. I feel such delight each morning to look out of the window and see green again (now that the snow has melted!). There are ponies in the field opposite and deer scamper up and down the hills. On Rodborough Common behind our house cows roam and graze freely. We have robins, tits and thrushes that feed in front of the house and we saw a huge buzzard the other day down in the valley. At night we can hear owls hooting.
There is a real sense of community on our street (which is simply called The Street!). While we were waiting for our kitchen appliances to be delivered, our neighbour let us use her washing machine. When the snow was lying, neighbours knocked on each other’s doors when they were going into town to make sure everyone had enough food in. Our other neighbour offered us wood for the fire. The moment that made me feel most at home was when we went up on the common for the first time. There we came across the dog walkers’ tree, shining with tinsel at Christmas time. As we got closer, we noticed laminated pictures hanging off the branches. Each was a photo of a particular dog with his or her name wishing the walkers a happy Christmas. Below the tree there is a collection box for Teckels Animal Sanctuaries in Whitminster where walkers can leave food for the animals or a cash donation. What a lovely idea! I’ve only been living here for a couple of weeks, but things like this give me a very warm feeling about the area. I’m looking forward to discovering a lot more.
As Beccy mentioned in her blog, I’ll be standing in for Vicki while she is away on maternity leave from the end of January. After leaving university in the early 1990s with a degree in languages and a teaching diploma (PGCE), I worked as a French and German teacher in the state sector in the south of England but soon switched to marketing, first for an academic publisher then for a chain of English-language schools. I made the move into the media in the late 1990s when I was living in Asia and I’ve now been working as an editor and writer for over 12 years, starting on a trade magazine before moving to a daily newspaper and finally an international newswire. I’ve worked in Taiwan, Thailand, Ireland, Germany and Britain. Most recently I was a subeditor for the English-language service of the newswire Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in Berlin. Since moving to Bristol just under two years ago I have done voluntary work for the Green Party as external communications officer.
That’s enough of the CV! I am delighted to have this opportunity to edit The Spark while Vicki is away as it’s a magazine that speaks to the heart of everything I care passionately about, so I hope I can do as good a job as Vicki in the six months I’ll be in the editor’s chair. Please get in touch by e-mail via editor@thespark.co.uk or call me on 0117-914-3436 with any ideas you have for getting people involved in projects in your local community.
Bill Heaney
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