South Norwood Tourist Board has kept me busy all week, whether its the constant phone calls from journalists, interviews with BBC news and radio 4 or just gathering the newspapers we have featured in but what I wasn’t expecting was the abuse. How dare we challenge the Lake District and their monopoly on natural beauty. What started as tongue in cheek promotion of our area turned into a spiteful and malicious attack on our attempt to raise the profile of our own neglected beautiful areas.

I have been to the Lake District and it’s full of middle class, 4×4 driving folk with children called Tarquin and Lucinda, whilst the locals are trying to cox as much money out of them as possible. I don’t blame the residents, if some snobby cunt wants to buy a ham sandwich for £10, but the bile that has been poured onto SNTB by a few (we moderated these comments) would have the majority of Cumbria holding their heads in shame. The lack of understanding about their own area and a whole lot of profanity and threats filled up our inbox, Facebook and the comment page on our website was unreal. Just to give you an example one comment was ‘South Norwood sucks dick’; Wordsworth couldn’t have penned it better himself. I can see why Daniel Defoe hated the Lake District.

However Saturday made it all worthwhile, when a journalist from the independent actually got off his arse and came to see what the hell was going on. What a fantastic write up, showing South Norwood warts and all, but he completely understood the whole project.