I’m not best placed to blog about St Helena. I’m 5,000 miles away from Half Tree Hollow – St Helena’s only suburb. I’m not a Saint (as the locals are called). I’ve never formally worked on the island, though I did present a show on Radio St Helena briefly, way back in the last millennium. But I have at least been to this tiny British island a couple of times, most recently in 2009. And I’ve kept in touch with friends, and I occasionally listen to Saint FM on the internet.
St Helena is a small island, a thousand miles from anywhere (except Ascension Island, which is even smaller), and fewer than 5,000 people now live there, mostly British citizens. Not much happens, but the stories that do emerge are special. There is no airport.
Why am I doing this? Well, I’m a former print and BBC journalist, now brushing up on my skills in the new media age at Coventry University, and I need to learn about blogging. I’ve found only a small number of blogs about St Helena, mostly dealing with the island’s history, so I hope there’s scope for a journalist to do something a little different. I expect I’ll cheat.
