After a week's absence, the blog returns with another shameless (or shameful perhaps?) plug for my reporter's surgery.

My turn has rolled around again and I will be coming back to Johnstons, 626 Lea Bridge Road, between 9.30am and 11.30am on Friday May 1, in what I pray will not be a vain attempt to meet our readers and gather a few stories. To be fair, it wouldn't take much to improve on last time, but if this surgery is an exact repeat, I will not be held accountable for my actions.

That is to say, there will be another blow-by-blow account of nothing and I don't think anybody wants that.

Meanwhile, a small avalanche of doom and gloom seems to have hit Waltham Forest in the last couple of days. As most people are no doubt aware by now, there's been a high-profile murder on the Leytonstone/Stratford border, which, coupled with the news that hundreds of vulnerable people have been missing out on vital care and that the popular street wardens scheme is to be axed among others, makes for a decidedly dismal paper.

And while there's little to balance out the doom and the gloom, I am reliably informed the paper does at least have a few stories championing the needs of the disenfranchised and overlooked. The above-mentioned story on care provision, for example, saw the companies responsible making full apologies to those affected and we're also sticking up for the elderly Austrian tourist whose photos were deleted by police.

If we can't have good news, though, we can at least have weird news. By far my favourite story of the week, national news included, is the phone mast disguised as a tree. The mast in question is actually quite convincing - so much so that birds have been seen trying to nest in it. Real birds, I hasten to add - not mobile security cameras disguised as birds or some such. Because this won't appear in the paper as yet, I'll refrain from including too much detail - it was just nice to see something a bit different and also quite funny.

Different and funny, therefore, is the order of the day. Don't disappoint, good blog readers - come along to Johnstons on Friday and furnish me with as many of these stories as possible.