Time flies: I can hardly believe this is the twelfth issue of the Hastings Handbook… and that my partner and I have been doing this for a full year now!

It’s been quite a year, setting up, growing and sustaining a local interest magazine for Hastings and St Leonards. I can’t say it’s been easy… in fact there has been much juggling of our lives, some last-minute panics, a few arguments and several very late nights. But it’s also been an eye-opening and fascinating year in which we’ve met so many lovely local residents – contributors, advertisers and readers – and not a month has gone by when we haven’t felt glad about publishing the Hastings Handbook. So we really are pleased that we’ve made it in good shape to celebrate our birthday with gusto.

We started with the idea of producing a local interest magazine with a good proportion of topical and seasonal articles that were worth reading, supported by advertising rather than dominated by it. Run on a shoestring from our spare room, we hoped we could provide an economical means of promoting local businesses and services and we knew that if we produced a free magazine that people actually enjoyed reading, rather than throwing straight in the recycling bin, then our advertisers would get a good response. We wanted to be a small business that helped publicise other small businesses, as well as the good things going on in our community. And so it’s really nice when people tell us that’s just what we’re doing.

There have been highs (meeting interesting people, researching and writing articles, doing ‘the walks’), and lows (deliveries in the rain, business admin, misbehaving computers). But what’s kept us going are the letters, emails and phone calls from readers telling us how much they enjoy the magazine, and the positive feedback from happy advertisers, telling us how the Hastings Handbook has put them in touch with new clients and customers, helping to grow their business more than they had hoped. The word seems to be getting around that the Hastings Handbook offers a really effective means of promotion, so that people are now coming to us rather than us trying to twist their arm (we never were much good at that!).

Hastings and St Leonards are great places to live and we try to reflect this wherever we can, promoting the positive side of our town which is so often unfairly maligned. With so many interesting and friendly people, a rich history, distinctive culture and beautiful countryside (plus the sea and world-class fish and chips), we’ve never had any difficulty finding interesting subjects to write about, and have plenty of ideas for upcoming issues.

If the Hastings Handbook is a success, it’s only
because we’ve had so many welcome and generous offers from contributors over the past year. I don’t want to miss anyone out (or make this sound like the Oscars), but some of our regulars we couldn’t do without: Ken Brooks is our History Man, Shirley from Vital Signs our health advisor, Hilary Totah the voice of a more alternative lifestyle, Milton Dunwoody our controversial cartoonist, then there’s Gary Mitchell, Jenny Southan, and everyone who’s kindly allowed us to use photographs and graphics.

As long as you enjoy reading the Hastings Handbook and using the services of our advertisers, we’ll keep on plopping it through your letterbox each month – or leaving it somewhere convenient for you to pick up. And if you can’t get a copy, you can read the whole magazine or look up past features on our website. Happy reading!