It's all kicking off this week.

We've got rampant clampers descending on people's cars while they buy their newspaper, angry factions facing off at a Leyton mosque, the verdict of Cllr Sinclair's fraud trial - and gangs.

Lots and lots of things about gangs - some surprising, some not so surprising and some outright frightening.

It's nothing specific that any one gang or other has done - more a sort of amorphous beast of a news feature - and, in the way of things in which one's editor shows a particular interest, nigh-impossible to pull together with any speed.

It all started when a 17-year-old kid rang us up to say he was sick of being threatened and intimidated and generally having his life ruined by gang culture and it spiralled from there.

It's now pretty much done but the one person I really wanted and needed to speak to - a senior police officer - proved unforthcoming until almost the very last possible minute.

Fortunately, having done the interview, I got some interesting stuff out of it and the feature's shaping up quite nicely, in time for deadline and everything, but it was pretty touch-and-go!

Deadline being met, however, the office is all but empty now. Both the Epping and Wanstead and Woodford desks have gone out for lunch (leaving us poor saps behind) in something of a cartoon-style vanishing act - you could almost see the clouds of dust behind them as they zipped out of the office.

Cue imaginary tumble weed blowing around their desks.

Still, onwards to next week. It always seems to come as surprise (to some people anyway) that after one week's paper is done, we have to start on another.

We've all been a little bit tetchy this week, what with one thing and another. It seems stress has been starting to get the better of us, which manifests itself in more ways than one as anyone who reads this blog at all regularly will know.

And as if that weren't enough, FCR is trying, for some reason, to incite violence between two of the Waltham Forest reporters. I mean, I know it's Wednesday but we don't usually resort to starting brawls until much later in the day.

I am, of course, joking.

We only brawl at weekends.