The papers are looking newsy

Everyone knows it's a tough market out there, most - if not all - firms are tightening their belts, and our advertising reps are really having to earn their corn at the moment to keep the paper stocked with ads.

This week the page count stands at 48 but we've changed out more of the 'common pages' (news pages which appear in more than one of our titles) for more edition specific pages to keep the news content as high as possible.

In fact even up to the deadline yesterday news was breaking and we were shifting things around to make room for ever more stories.

There's a good mix of front pages: a drugs gang jailed on Sunbury, a guy who has fallen foul of Runnymede Council after chopping down about 1,000 trees on land at Virginia Water - that's on our Staines & Egham edition, claims that 200+ people in Spelthorne could have been paying too much council tax since the early nineties, and it goes on.

One ongoing story that has really got me, and the rest of the newsroom intrigued, is the trial of Martin Hale, 51, a father of five from Embercourt Road, Thames Ditton, who is charged with the murder of his wife Maureen.

She mysteriously vanished 10 years ago but her body was never found. Then, in June 2008, Mr Hale was arrested and charged with her murder. Why police decided a decade on that he was their man was a riddle at the time.

Now, several months on, the trial is underway at Kingston Crown Court and details are emerging daily about the case against him.

This week's paper has the latest details such as claims, made in the court that Mrs Hale, who was 42 when she disappeared, had been having an extramarital affair with a 29 year old gardener, and her husband had drawn up a list of ways to dispose of a body.

Mr Hale denies murder and we'll shortly hear his defence.

I'd expect a lot of people will want to pick up the Surrey Herald Walton edition this week to read about the case, but if they need another reason, anyone who buys the paper in Sainsbury's Walton is offered a free Carman's muesli bar.

I tasted one and they aren't too bad, probably not my cup of tea but then I'm not exactly a leading light when it comes to choosing healthy snacks (as evidenced by the chrisps and bag of jelly sweets in my bottom desk drawer). These bars are very popular in Australia though, and the Aussies seemed a healthy bunch when I was out there in 2006, so see what you think.