The Harbinger Newsletter

4 January, (by hand)

Dear Sir,

I write in a condition of great dejection. I will not seek to conceal from you the crestfallen woe in which I was enveloped upon opening - which I did with great anticipation - your first edition.

The purpose, as I see it - and I think I will not be alone in this - of the institution of the press to which you belong - indeed, I would assert, of the entire fourth estate - is to pass on fact and truth. No demur can reasonably be anticipated to that statement I am sure.

So much the worse then, when the very institution which is assigned this august task, itself stoops to peddle distortions, canards, nostrums and what are known as "urban myths" (doubly inappropriate in our little village). I stop myself through decorum before using other words such as "untruth" and falsity.

I refer, as I am sure a very little research will inform the editor, to the dissimulation masquerading as "history" in your January edition. I leave this matter without specification in your capable hands confident of your assiduous investigations and corrections of this lapse.

Yours faithfully

Jacqueline Fernandez-Hernon

The Editor, Tilebury 'Harbinger'

16 January (by electronic mail)

Dear Madam,

I wrote on 2nd January to welcome the return of the Village newsletter and I welcome and am suitably grateful for your decision to select my message for publication. I was encouraged to see my words in print concluding, inevitably, that you, and your editorial staff, were intending to embrace their propositions.

It is perhaps too early to judge. However, I must observe that your first edition left me feeling that you had perhaps had insufficient time, in light of the difficulties of taking the paper to print, appropriately, to vet its contents with care.

I write to assure you and your staff of my continued support and offer for your consideration a few minor suggestions:

1. I was interested to read the uplifting descriptions of our honourable history. We should all be instructed by these examples of sacrifice and heroism which have bought us our liberty today.
2. It seems that some columns you propose will be of wider interest in the Village than others. I do not oppose the inclusion of minority interests, however it does seem unlikely that there will be quite such interest in mending taps as in nature and history.
3. Finally, and as I rasied in my earlier letter, the newsletter should be a guardian of our morals. In light of this, I would recommend that the editor take especial care to manage the enthusiasms of certain of your contributors - particularly where they show excessive interest in flippant matters such as fashion and celebrity (or, for that matter, astrology).

I note also that there is potentially space amongst your current columns for an article or two on the charitable activities taking place in the Village. If your readers should consider such an article of interest I would invite them to write to you accordingly.

With confidence that you will choose also to publish this message and will, in due course, take full note of your readers' views.

Yours faithfully

Doreen Davies

(Chairperson of the village integration and charitable purposes committee)

Harbinger

29 January (by hand - manuscript has been transcribed as well as the editor was able)

[no salution]

yours horoscope not all right - Pisces not anything right at all. very danger thsi time of year pises.

culd not understand bagers paintins not very good.

liked it - thank you. will read nex tiem.

[illegible]