"I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; I gallop'd, Dirk gallop'd, we gallop'd all three...'

Despite Robert Browning's much loved poem 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'  saying nothing about the 'Good News' in question (echoing the sound of galloping hooves was all he was after in the poem), and despite the fact that the form of transport I 'sprang to' early last Wednesday morning was not a horse but a modestly proportioned motor car  (sometimes referred to as 'the lozenge') I still sensed a  bonding with Joris and Dirk as I set out in driving sleet to bring 1,700 copies of 'the Good News' from 'Lydney to Littledean' and other strategic distribution points east of the newspaper's publishing offices.

Yes, you've guessed it; my 'Good News' was the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley Review.

So this is the story of one day in the life (not of Ivan Denisovitch – I may have looked haggard but I wasn't sick, and despite rumours to the contrary, Britain's not yet become the equivalent of a Soviet labour camp) of a recently appointed Review agent whose 'challenge' was to deliver before sundown the only newspaper in the Forest of Dean which, as a well-known lager beer once claimed, 'refreshes the parts that others cannot reach.'

And what parts they are! There are post offices, pubs, pizza parlours and petrol stations, and dental surgeries and chip shops. And there's a galaxy of get-up-and-go youngsters (and oldsters) braving the elements (and the odd letterbox) to deliver the latest edition of all that is great and good in the Forest of Dean... to expectant readers (some of whom, given the prevailing climate, may also be expecting their expectorant). Agricultural readers like Seth Rotary who's expecting to demonstrate his nuclear powered potato harvester at the upcoming Congress of the National Wind Farmers Union; and wild life enthusiasts like Clare Howitzer whose study 'Bat Habitats in Hungary'  is expected to figure prominently in decisions concerning the Northern Quarter's alleged renaissance.

But what, I hear you say, did readers have to say about that week's front page? Market research is not part of the brief but I am able to disclose that Cllr Tim Gwilliam is not just 'a big fan of FANS' he's also got big fans outside Berry Hill; although a random poll suggested he'd have even more fans if, instead of linking up with the Labour Party, he'd been his own man and stood as an independent.

"Else it's nothing more than posturing party politicians,' muttered one reader (name and address supplied) as he hosed down his galoshes with a copy of The Times, 'and the preservation of their pesky privileges!'

"God's speed..!" cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; 'Speed!' echoed the wall to us galloping through...' rhymes Browning from his berth on board a steam vessel bound for Trieste (in the year of the Reform Act of 1832...yes,real parliamentary reform is way overdue) as it bobbed through the Bay of Biscay... and then up pops Browning's Pippa Passes and "God is in His Heaven; And all is right with the world."

God Only Knows, as the Beach Boys once warbled nearly 50 years ago, how much more than 'speed' we'll need if our souls are to sail safely through 2013's potential turbulence.

Whatever...when Seth's chips are down, and when Clare's bats have come home to roost, you can still count on the Review to recapture the rapture (litter louts permitting) of the Forest of Dean and Wye Valley, in all its 'dapple-dawn- drawn' glory.  

And God will still be in his Heaven.

– John Muir, Newnham.