“You want to be someone!”

2024 faces its final curtain and as always I’m inspired to look back and reflect hence my recent 2 part round up of the year gone by. This final blog of the year is more of my musings on Chester as well as some personal highs and lows.

Its been a record year for the blog with over 300 posts ( the highest ever) and nearly 200,000 views. I made positive connections with the University, Police, Town Hall, Chester Heritage festival, Grosvenor Shopping Centre, and Hospital which allowed me to significantly boost my news output. Its always interesting to see what posts strike a chord and this years hits have been mainly press releases; Paddington, free ice cream and a jailed drug gang were up there, usually far exceeding my own personal posts and writings.

Is there a market out there for writing about Chester I wonder? Seeing as, with a few exceptions I’m practically the only person doing it, its clear to me that a balance between content and getting people to click must be accepted. People complain about Cheshire Live, whose coverage of Chester has understandably fallen due to cutbacks and its regional focus- but people don’t pay papers anymore and people don’t pay for website news. So how are publications supposed to continue in the long term? The Chester Standard is a reliable read but even that has to encourage a click with “the Cheshire town” without telling you where it actually is. Meanwhile Chester Nub news, the apparent saviour of local news seem to post the same press releases I do, but several days later. The news gap remains with some issues not mentioned by anyone, one head scratching example the sudden closure of the Watergate Street gallery. It vanished like it was never even there. The local news outlook feels bleak compared to a decade ago when there was a friendly rivalry between me, Cheshire Live and the Standard. I’d often go and visit the teams in their offices. But where is the love for local news now and do people even want to read it ?

I’ll be honest I’ve been running this blog for over 10 years and I have never been offered sponsorship for what I do. That’s a knife to the heart for me after battling for legitimacy for a decade. A balance again needs finding between promoting and supporting the community, with my own time and the costs of running a website , which only receives a highly limited yearly income from WordPress adverts. This also applies to the Lego display which has been a source of such joy for 10 years, but doesn’t it hurt when you make a model and its barely acknowledged ? In contrast the lovely team at Currans Homes and BIG Heritage offered funds to cover the cost of bricks and my time.

The struggle for legitimacy pains when I take the time to write a blog promoting an event and then it gets ignored. I was the only media in attendance at the launch of the Cathedral’s Project Discovery and wrote a positive report mentioning the role of Mr Chester Gyles Brandreth- of course hardly anyone read it and Gyles ignored it despite being tagged in the post. To this I can add the row in the press area at the Duke’s wedding. Apparently the etiquette amongst the “professionals” is that the night before enter the closed press area and mark their territory with their names. As far as I knew the area was first come, first served, from the information that was communicated to me. After getting a spot I then faced uncomfortable elbows of resentment and would probably have been lynched by this angry mob, if not for the skillful intervention of the Grosvenor and Council press teams. “You’ll not see him again on a job!” shouted one media photo hack after I was moved to the much more pleasant broadcast media area. The joys and sorrows of being an outsider on the inside.

Responses to some posts I thought would have interested people have often been poor. Communication about the One City Plan for example, hardly any interest. This makes me wonder about the future of engagement and messaging in Chester. Do people care unless they can have an argument on Facebook about it? With the changes made at X/ Twitter, many people have left the platform and debate and discussion can be hit and miss. Thus, we content creators must now post on numerous other platforms simultaneously. Things aren’t simple anymore! There is also a tendency for things to always fall to the same level of debate with a high percentage of comments on the Facebook photo groups descending to everything was better in the 1940s- 1990s.

A heated debate always has value, but a small core of people enjoy their blank negativity. Harrods Beauty, happily received by 95% as a prestigious anchor tenant filling an iconic building after 3 years, was slammed for being a “waste of a building”, it “won’t last”, “too expensive”. Meanwhile edgy commenters post that every business that closes will be a coffee shop. Well done to you all. 2 years on we still the “food hall” fan club going on- I could reply to them about all the non food traders, but their opinions are not based on facts anymore, only emotion based on what the old market was like, or how they perceived it to be. “Chester is dead” say many others, despite all the new openings, new experiences, low number of vacant units etc: again a view that is based on nothing but ignorance. The number of people and groups and businesses ( too many to list) that are striving to improve Chester and everything gets silenced by a reductive stupid comments. Chester, like any location is not perfect, we have the Dee House debacle, the poor public transport ( made much worse this year by Stagecoach cuts) the long process to repair the collapsed wall and many other battles and controversies. For the sake of my soul and wellbeing I have continued to emphasise the positive and the progress.

Adding to the personal woes, the anti racism demonstration in Chester annoyed a fair number of people who were nice enough to send me their passive aggressive/ aggressive thoughts via DM, happily interrogating me on national affairs ( one particularly nasty one from a local creative whose work I had championed as well!) Up there with the time last year when I was labelled a Nazi for taking photos of a Palestinian demonstration!

Coverage of the election was made needlessly complex with Chester being split in 2, requiring interviews with both sets of candidates, something I probably won’t do again next time. Also disappointment that some of the candidates couldn’t be bothered replying either.

Reading all this, you may think I’m seriously unhappy and fatigued. Sure I’ve been used and abused by many, happy to take the free publicity and never engage again, and people I’ve championed and supported, in quite a few cases tend to turn on me or pretend they don’t know me in fairness that probably happens to everyone in life though doesn’t it. Unless I’m just easy to fall out with. I suppose running a voluntary social media empire is a strange way of coping with the inadequacies and failings in your life, but that’s the path I have been treading for a long time now. Everyone wants to be someone.

Finding fresh ways to comment on the familiar Chester calendar of events and happenings has also been a challenge. So this year after enjoying the Market since it opened, I hosted the first ever quiz and put myself in the spotlight for a change. After enjoying Russell Kirk and co’s fantastic community parades, I took part myself for the first time, joining the pirates and the chefs in the midsummer and winter watch parades respectively. We can be heroes, just for 30 minutes. Participation was a buzz like no other , performers aren’t allowed their phones so it was a beautiful moment to experience first hand. My other highlights were the comforting escapism of Picturehouse , the cinema I’ve craved since the Odeon closed, and also the night I spent with the Street Angels- true Chester heroes. Despite the occasional darkness Chester can still take your breath away.

I’m so grateful to everyone else’s ongoing love and support. I’ve made many new friends and connections in 2024, to those people as well, thank you. This year, the kindness of strangers has again given me a massive boost. From the random person in the street coming up to me saying that he liked one of my blogs, to those that have provided news tip offs and everyone else who has messaged with help, information or feedback.

Happy new year to all my readers and thanks