Flipping Comments!

Hold the front page! Here’s some twickerati news. We’re now trialling having the most recent comments displayed first (a la BBC & Daily Telegraph sites) as opposed to what we had previously where the most recent comments on any story were shown last (a la Richmond & Twickenham Times and Guardian sites).

Better? Worse? Bovvered? It’s your view that counts. And who knows, if you’re really lucky, it might even be taken into consideration. No further questions, your Honour.

Hyperlocal Social “Tweet Up” – 19th Jan

Imagine it. It’s summer 2011 and a handful of dedicated souls are meeting for a drink. These few people represent the elite of the independent TW hyperlocal website scene. At the table are the editors of Teddington Town, St Margarets and Twickerati together with a couple of other locals with an interest in doing stuff online round these parts. They share a few ideas, trade experiences of what works and what doesn’t, and also dare to talk about other stuff. Whatevs, really.

Scroll forward six months and it’s time to expand the concept to an ever so slightly bigger handful of people. If you run a local site, have ideas about that kind of thing, fancy contributing content, like the idea of the whole hyperlocal community thing or simply want to engage in that most unsavoury of modern activities “networking”, then now is your chance.

It’s the TW hyperlocal social. Open invite and so informal that it’ll be like wearing flip flops to a funeral. Initial cast list as above but with a few more and now that you’ve read this, maybe even with your good self.

Thursday 19th January. From 8.30pm. The Royal Oak, Richmond Road, Twickenham. (opposite York House, no less!)

New page added. Just for you.

This page is a bit of an experiment. OK, as an experiment it falls some way short of the Large Hadron Collider but we reckon it’s worth a punt. Wait for it… we’ve only bloody gone and added a new page to the site. No, not a new news item, w’re talking about a brand new static page. It’s called Your News and, guess what, it’s specially for you…

Got something to say or a bit of news that doesn’t quite fit on any of the items or pages on the site? Well, stick it on here then. If you’re lucky then we’ll tweet the link to the comment and see if the great mass of the twickerati can help you out. Who knows, it might even work. Simply add your thing as a reply on the page and click “post comment”. That’s it.

The “Your News” page is here. And it’s also on the top menu bar. Good luck.

Wishing You a Merry Christmas. Sort of.

As another year draws to a close, some newspapers and websites write poncey editorials on what a year it’s been, blather on about the future and end up wishing their readers all the very best for Christmas and the New Year. Boring! We actively strive to avoid cliches here at twickerati. Totally naff is what they are. On the other hand it has been an interesting year here in Twickenham what with big bust ups over the station and schools, fetes and festivals galore in the summer (generally on the rainy days), Twikileaks from Castle Cable and the RFU, and plenty businesses coming and going on the High Street.

We’ll definitely not be doing the whole ‘looking to the future’ thing other than to confirm that, as Sir Nodward of Holder once observed, it’s only just begun. But if we were to look forward we’d be wondering about whether the Twickenham Area Action Plan (aka The TWAP) can deliver real change to the town, whether El Brute can offer us any more consultations on anything at all, ever, and we might also wonder how many more cafes we can absorb in Twickenham before we all suffer from a healthy dose of caffeine poisoning.

And as to wishing readers a Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for 2012, forget it! OK, perhaps a quick one then. Thanks to all the people who have visited this site over the last year to find out about what’s going on in Twickenham, to comment, to contribute, to argue, to get informed and occasionally, we hope, to be entertained. A bit.

Community interaction is what makes this site work so please keep coming back in 2012 and, if you’re feeling especially festive, why not tell your friends about it. Don’t be shy, they’re all part of the great twickerati too.

Merry Christmas and Best Wishes for a Happy New Year

Damn, how did that slip out?!

Twickenham Festive 5s: Big Up Yours

Greetings! Christmas is fast approaching you’re probably thinking about those gifts you still need to buy, what food to stock up on, which parties to attend, which ones to avoid and generally pondering on how to cope. You need some need top tips, right? Right!

Perhaps you’re also looking back on the year and thinking of all those New Year’s resolutions from last January that have crumbled to dust in your trembling hands. OK, so forget that for a minute and let’s think positive, festive thoughts and mull over the good stuff.

So whether you’re a retailer, a punter, a blogger, a worker, a vocal local or like us here at twickerati just downright normal, we want to hear the five things, just five things, that we need to know to complete our year. You’ve got the gist of it. We need your Twickenham Festive 5 and this item gives you the chance to big up yours.

Take a look at the replies at the end of the piece to see what’s been added so far.

The Cabbage Patch 10

Twickenham’s own long distance running event, The Cabbage Patch 10 drew a crowd of over 1,600 runners and plenty of spectators on the morning of Sunday 16th October. The 10 mile route goes from Twickenham to Kingston then back to Twickenham via Ham and Richmond. It was the Cabbage Patch 10′s 30th birthday which makes it one of the best established distance races around.

Participants ranged from the very fast (the winner took just under 49 minutes!) to those doing it just for the fun of it. Even your humble correspondent took part for the first time. The weather was great for running – sunnyish, cool and with no breeze and so there was no excuse not to put in a decent time. There were plenty of spectators along the route showing their support and a few who probably wanted to be somewhere else but couldn’t move their cars for the steady stream of sweating bodies blocking their way. Getting applauded into the grounds of York House is usually the preserve of our beloved Councillors (they wish), and so it was great for mere mortals to experience that level of support as they reached the finish line.

Here’s the start on King Street…

The race gets underway

And here’s what the super-keen people looked like at the start…

Runners starting out

And here are some of the finishers a little further down the field crossing the line at York House…

Cabbage Patch finishers

The winner was Paskar Owor from the famous Belgrave Harriers club in a time of 48m 58s. He beat second placed Mehreab Soloman by just two seconds. The first woman to cross the line was was Jessica Coulson from Stockport Harriers. She finished in tenth place, clocking a time of 52m:53s.

And if you want more about what it’s like to take part then you can read Stephanie Blake’s account of the 2010 event in the twickerati archive.

All in all, a great morning and well done to everyone. So, who’s up for it next year then?

Twickenham is full of idiots. Discuss.

“Twickenham is full of idiots. Discuss.” You’ll never see a headline like that in the Richmond & Twickenham Times. If truth be told, you’ll not see a headline like that on this site either. Well probably not more than just this once but, and it’s a big but, we could do it every week if we wanted. OK, so you’re already bored and already asking yourself what is the point of all this. Well it’s because our esteemed and genuinely pretty good local paper, the Richmond & Twickenham Times, is adding the “hyperlocal” to its well established “local” presence. In addition to its borough-wide coverage it’s just launched a Twickenham specific site, twickenhamlive.co.uk. The aim is to cover Twickenham in a way that engages with the local community and, they hope, becomes sustained by “user-generated content”. Fair play to them, it’s something that every local site would want, including this one.

Happy Birthday! Twickerati is 1

How do you celebrate a first birthday? If you’re a child then you usually get dumped in a high-chair and have a parent stuff cake into your mouth while other people stand around singing songs at you while sticking a paper hat on your head. Yeah, thanks a bunch for that!

Hi prays for twickerati

“I simply want to tell you that I’m all new to weblog and absolutely savored your web site. Very likely I’m likely to bookmark your blog . You absolutely come with incredible well written articles. Bless you for sharing your web site.”

Wow!! It’s always great to get positive feedback. A little bit of praise can go a long way, so imagine the delight at the twickerati HQ when that beautifully crafted missive arrived in the comments queue. Unfortunately our number one fan did not reveal too much about him or herself. We’d love him (or her) to write an article for the site but we reckon that he (or she… or it) is perhaps not even a Twickenham resident. A shame. But local or not, we’re happy to grab that bit of praise by the shoulders and plant a smacker right on its rosy cheeks.

But our new friend did get us thinking, and this is where you come in, dear reader. Do you have feedback you’d like us to consider to make your twickerati experience even more “marginally above average?”. Would you, for example, like even more coverage of the station? More coverage of local shops? More features by other contributors and more coverage about what’s on in Twickenham ? Or less? So much less?

And more importantly… what do you think of the adverts on the site? Do the generic Google ads annoy you like they annoy us? If so, would you prefer to see adverts for local businesses? Or no ads at all? The deep pockets of the widow of a rich Nigerian general whose donations help to fund this site could perhaps stretch to getting rid of the Google ads. Perhaps. We’ll just have to sell some more Rolex watches to make it happen.

And did you know you can submit your comments without having to give an email address? We’d prefer it if you did, even though email addresses are never published, but it’s not obligatory. It just means that your comments get checked before they are released on the site. A perfect route if you’re a bit shy or have a particularly stupid name.

So, dear readers, what do you want less of, more of or even the same amount of? After all… “You absolutely come with incredible well written comments. Bless you for sharing your comments on this web site.”

twickerati’s Knewimage boost

It’s always good to be able to recommend a local business and that’s what we’re doing right here. The folks at Knewimage have done a brilliant job putting together some 100% tip top twickerati business cards. The fact that you’re reading this means that you’ve already been introduced to twickerati, but you might as well keep an eye out for the new yellow and orange babies around Twickenham.

As well as cards, artwork and printed materials Knewimage also do events marketing, business signage and shop design. You might have seen some of their work around. We’re talking about The Conscious Health Centre on Hampton Road, signage for Arthur’s restaurant and the Kinesis physiotherapy clinic, and the big banner on Mary’s Terrace about the Twickenham station development.

Check out their website for more info…