Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Silly Season

5:44pm Wednesday 23rd July 2008

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It's been a week of minor triumphs.

I found out at the beginning of the week that the Pink Paper wanted to take up the story about the school production of Romeo and Julien and - more excitingly perhaps - on Thursday, I'll have had my first ever front page lead with the continuing saga of credit card fraud in Chingford.

Somewhat surprisingly, the story turned out to be a lot bigger than any of us expected. It all started with an email from a reader, asking us whether we knew anything about a problem with fraud at the local Morrisons. As it turns out, thousands, or even tens of thousands, of pounds were stolen using credit cards cloned in Chingford (how's that for some punchy alliteration?) but of course, you'll have to read this week's Guardian for the full story.

To anyone else, I expect such things probably seem trivial - and in the grand scheme of things, of course, they are. But to me, a new reporter with comparatively limited experience, it was cause for a bit of a happy dance. Granted, it was only an internal happy dance, so as not to incur the derision of my colleagues, but still.

Otherwise, it's been distinctly calmer around here this week. After the explosion of news fodder last week, things have slowed down considerably. I've been informed that we are now entering what is not-entirely-jokingly referred to as "silly season". This, apparently, is the time of year, around the end of July, when schools are closed, council meetings have dried up and people phone us far less frequently, having fled the country in search of warmer climes. Or perhaps just fled to Skegness, based on today's news...

After a flurry of school fetes, flower shows and final council meetings to keep the newsdesk occupied throughout this month, August is apparently set to be a barren wasteland, in which we can only hope, rather cynically perhaps, for something terrible to happen.

The upshot of this, so I'm told, is that the newspaper subsequently has to take a few hits and spin out stories that otherwise might be a lot shorter. Of course, we can't predict the future - something momentous could very well happen in the next few weeks - but I've been told to be prepared for a lengthy dry spell.