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 Did Peter Watson know what he was
letting himself in for in 1988 as he walked around Egremont with
600 small sheets of paper passing on Party news to Labour
supporters? It was on one of those occasions that Tony Griffin
stopped him and suggested using a computer instead of a
typewriter. We all laugh at this but back then not many homes
had computers. Peter had never used one and it was a daunting
prospect but one that he had to embrace as he recognised its
potential.
Adjusting to new technology was not one of Peter’s strong
points. He laughs recalling how he deleted a whole paragraph so
that he could alter a spelling mistake at the beginning of it!
The A4 newsletter cost the princely sum of £15 a month to
produce and began to include paid advertisements to cover the
printing costs. In 1990 Tony had another idea – Why not call the
newsletter Egremont Today? It was, and it plodded on quite
nicely for two years until the Conservatives brought out their
own version ‘Castle Crack’. In response to this, production of
ET, as it affectionately became known, increased to include
2,500 homes around Egremont and addressed the whole community,
not just Labour supporters.
It was a big risk, and as printing costs soared he realised that
other methods of production had to be sought. Enter Rosie, a
retired printing press from Bolton Town Hall, who joined the ET
team in April 1993 and very quickly became the ‘other woman’ in
Peter’s life. Unlike Connie she was more than happy to live in
the garden shed!
Like all great love stories Peter and Rosie’s path didn’t always
run smoothly. It took him and Dennis Hill 3 months to get a
decent print off her. It is well known that Peter cannot drive;
Connie once gave him a lesson, but the clue as to how that went
is in the word once! He is also unable to ride a bike and it’s
fair to say he is not mechanically minded so Rosie presented him
with a whole new range of problems, many of which included not
knowing which way to turn levers and handles and the basic
understanding of how a machine works.
I once walked into the print shop to find Peter looking bemused,
holding a piece of Rosie in his hand. In panic I asked him where
the bit had come from: to this day he does not know, and Rosie
still ran without it!
Dennis was an invaluable support for Peter and was there to help
him through the difficult and stressful changes that he found so
hard to cope with. Slow to learn new skills it took him much
longer than Dennis to grasp printing, but Peter’s relationship
with Rosie was to become a strong and enduring one, right to the
end when she retired to Africa in 2009.
Around the time of Rosie’s arrival the contents of the paper
evolved to include more articles which were community based
rather than all political. The people of Egremont and beyond
were starting to dictate what would be in the paper, as they
began to take ownership of what they now saw as theirs.
Somewhere along the way Castle Crack breathed its last whilst
Egremont Today flourished and went from strength to strength.
Why is it so popular and enduring? “We write for the people in
our communities, but our windows are open to the world,” says
Peter, and as for the political side of things, “Telling people
what to believe is not our job; we try to help people feel part
of a community.”
It has always been a joy for Peter to see local people reaching
out to those in other countries who do not share the privileges
that we have in life, and ET has always played a strong part in
that.
“We are a decent community,” says Peter “with broad sympathy,
whose hearts can go out to other countries and cultures.” Seeing
support given by our community to the Rungwe Link and most
recently the Netza Project, and being able to donate money to
them and many other worthy causes in the name of our readers,
gives Peter a sense of pride as he walks around the town that he
firmly calls home, still delivering his beloved paper, most
definitely the oldest paper boy in town ! |
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