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Now, I don’t know about you, but in the days before Facebook, Twitter — or X, as we must now apparently call it — we had newspapers.

Actual newspapers.

Made of paper.

And I’m of an age where I remember them with some fondness.

No jokes, please. I’m perfectly aware that this now places me somewhere between a VHS recorder and a Ford Granada.

The local paper was your weekly peek into what had been going on around you.

Who had done what. What was opening. What was closing. Which road was being dug up. Which councillor had become terribly concerned about dog mess. Who had won the raffle at the village hall.

Mine was Faversham.

Fast forward a few decades and the local paper is still going.

Sort of.

I recently borrowed a copy from a family member who had actually paid the asking price of £2.80, and after flicking through it I began to wonder whether Faversham itself had been quietly removed from Kent overnight.

There was Canterbury.

There was Herne Bay.

There was Thanet.

There was Sittingbourne.

There was Folkestone.

There was Rochester.

There was Hamstreet.

There were places I suspect most people in Faversham have never visited and, in some cases, may not even be able to point to on a map without assistance.

Faversham, meanwhile, appeared to have gone missing.

Which is odd, because Faversham is hardly short of things to write about.

It is a beautiful old market town, steeped in history, surrounded by glorious countryside and villages and, at the moment at least, still holding its own as one of the jewels in Kent’s crown.

There are centuries of stories here.

Buildings.

People.

Businesses.

The creek.

The market.

Shepherd Neame.

Changes to the town.

Planning.

Traffic.

Local characters.

In other words, enough material to fill a local newspaper.

You would think.

But this particular media organisation — the Kent Messenger — seems remarkably determined to produce a Faversham newspaper containing news from almost everywhere except Faversham.

Even the rather nice Decades feature wanders off on holiday.

Folkestone.

Rochester.

Teston.

Hamstreet.

Which made me wonder: what happened to Faversham’s decades?

Did we lose them?

Were they accidentally left on a train at Sittingbourne?

Has someone at head office decided that several hundred years of Faversham history simply isn’t quite as interesting as a man changing a light bulb in Hamstreet?

Because apparently that is the sort of thing the people of Faversham have been waiting all week to discover.

There’s also a story about a new line opening on Thameslink.

And, magnificently, the opening of the Eurostar service at Ashford.

A service which no longer stops at Ashford.

So we’ve now reached the point where a Faversham newspaper is reporting old news about a railway service somewhere else which no longer exists in the form being reported.

Excellent.

Meanwhile Faversham itself is presumably standing by the creek, waving its arms and shouting:

“Hello? Still here.”

And just when you think the geography department may already be under some strain, along comes Facebook to lend a hand.

“Expect lightning, hail and a lot of rain,” announces Faversham News.

Fair enough.

The accompanying photograph, however, appears to show Dungeness lighthouse.

Not Faversham.

Dungeness.

Now, unless somebody has quietly moved Faversham Creek several miles south and installed one of Britain’s more recognisable lighthouses at the end of it, this does seem a curious choice.

Perhaps geography has become more flexible since I was at school.

Or perhaps the editorial rule is simply:

Kent is Kent. That’ll do.

To be fair, the weather warning was for Kent.

But when your name is Faversham News, there is something wonderfully confident about illustrating it with one of the most unmistakably Dungeness photographs imaginable.

Still, at least it was in the correct county.

Probably best not to push our luck.

Then we arrive at the real masterpiece.

The section which truly makes the £2.80 feel like money well spent.

Kent County Council highways notices.

Not one page.

Not two.

Not three.

Seven pages.

Seven entire pages of tiny legal print.

You could wallpaper a downstairs toilet with it.

And you’d still have enough left over to explain a temporary traffic restriction in Paddock Wood.

Page after page begins with the magnificent phrase:

“Kent County Council, acting in exercise of its powers under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984…”

At which point even the strongest reader begins to lose the will to live.

Somewhere inside these seven pages, undoubtedly, is important information.

A road may be closed.

A junction may change.

Someone may be prohibited from turning left between 8.17am and 8.23am on alternate Wednesdays unless driving a vehicle carrying livestock.

I don’t know.

I tried reading it.

My eyesight deteriorated and I briefly forgot my own name.

And naturally, a percentage of these notices aren’t even about Faversham.

Of course they aren’t.

That would be far too straightforward.

So we now have a 48-page Faversham newspaper containing Canterbury, Herne Bay, Thanet, Sittingbourne, Folkestone, Rochester, Hamstreet, an extinct Eurostar service, Dungeness lighthouse and enough highways legislation to qualify you for a minor post at County Hall.

For £2.80.

Personally, I’d keep the money.

I’d go into Faversham, buy a coffee, sit down somewhere and have a conversation with an actual local person.

Within ten minutes you’d know who was moving house, which shop was closing, why the traffic was dreadful, what the council had done now, who had fallen out with whom and probably the exact reason Tesco’s car park has a sign twelve feet in the air containing enough small print to negotiate a peace treaty.

And the extraordinary thing is this:

you’d probably end up knowing considerably more about Faversham than you would after reading the Faversham newspaper.

 

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