AN INTRODUCTION
By The Editors
LOCAL NEWSPAPERS have long been society's thermometer. Unlike real thermometers, though, you can stick them anywhere and get an instant result.
The Framley Examiner is one such thermometer. Launched in March, 1978, it has since been measuring the temperature of local news, sport, opinion, entertainments, businesses and pleasures. The paper's patient is the healthy town of Framley, and the surrounding peripheral environs.
Framley is much like any other town in Britain. Indeed, travel writer Quentin Hammer recently described it as much "like any other town in Britain." And, much like any other town in Britain, there are always stories of incandescent importance and feelgood fundraising fighting for space on its pages.
Because whether it's a fireman stuck up a tree being rescued by a cat, or the local W.I. burying themselves in a time capsule, or just someone selling their second-hand child's Paul Simon costume, you'll find them all in The Framley Thermometer!
After 23 faithful years serving its readers, The Framley Examiner took a giant lip into the future in 2001, when it set up its first website. We only have one scanner in the office, and Pete is the only one who knows how to use it, and he only works Thursdays and Fridays, so the site is regularly updated with a careful selection of pages from the thermometer.
Since passing this technological millstone, people from all over the world and further have been able to log up and read all the news from Framley, Whoft, St Eyot's, Wripple, Molford, Chutney, Sockford and (since we realised we'd forgotten somewhere and started including it) even Effing Sodbury.
Now The Framley Examiner is being made into a book, fittingly called The Framley Examiner. Penguin, a publishing company from down London way, have decided that this thermometer is worth preserving on paper for future generations of readers and nurses.