busker

Constant Gardner

We take our press for granted, that the newsprint will be there when required, that the coverage will be as current as the TV screen we've just turned from and - naturally - that the omniscient reporter will have the objectivity of Solomon to reflect our own fair-minded disinterested views.

We expect nothing less than telepathic coverage of what interests us, and when introduced to totally new ideas or issues, we expected that, too.

I'm banging on about the Fourth Estate because I've just caught up with my Bainbridge Islander for Sept 17-23 and see that the main reason I even turn the front page - Steven Gardner - is leaving to write about somewhere called Central Kitsap, wherever that might be (and pretty nebulous and unappreciative a galaxy it sounds, to boot).

I'll miss his voice and his instinct for picking subjects I poach and pass off as evidence of my own wide-ranging radar.

His characteristically no-nonsense valete  appears on that inside page I've come to associate as his alone, and full marks to editrice Rachel Pritchett for allowing him those inches to bid us such a literate farewell.

SG thanks us and hopes he's served us well, to which I raise my beaker of morning Foglifter java and assure him he has most royally.

"Keep in touch", he ends, to which my reply is, "Don't you be a stranger, neither, sir."

As my old cricket coach used to say, with manly wooden expression - whether one had been bowled for a duck or just taken six wickets for as many runs -

"Well played, that man.

Right, lad, no call to stand there gawping - off round the nets and work on your next game."

Good innings there, Steven, and - wherever they are - lucky blighters, those Centralian Kit Saps.