When Rory McIlroy was turned away from an Eastbourne golf club, Jeremy Forrest and Facebook parties

TENNIS week in Eastbourne is when you see the seaside town at its regal best.
All around Eastbourne there are flags and banners heralding the Aegon International tournament which features the world's best women players looking to find some last minute grass court form ahead of Wimbledon.
Devonshire Park itself is a wonderful place to watch tennis as when you step into the grounds there's a warm, friendly atmosphere about the courts. Unlike Wimbledon, where you really are kept at arm's length from the players by stern-faced, Ray Ban-wearing security guards, Eastbourne is far more relaxed.
This week we had Rory McIlroy fly back to East Sussex to cheer on his Danish girlfriend and former world number one, Caroline Wozniacki.
I'm not sure whether Rory got in a game of golf during his stay in Eastbourne - last year he was turned away from the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club when officials feared the course was too small for him. What a wasted opportunity for the golf club, who instead sent him packing with his clubs up the road to the East Sussex National at Uckfield.
Television can never really portray the speed of tennis or how hard these giraffe-like women hit the ball over the tallest of nets and across the tiniest of courts. It is phenomenal to watch sport at the highest level.

But above all for Eastbourne, there is such a terrific buzz when the tennis charabanc arrives in town. The hotels are full, the restaurants are brimming and along the seafront it's really bustling.
The other evening I ran along the seafront for a Wednesday speed session with Meads Runners on the Western Lawns, which is situated right outside the elegant splendour of the Grand Hotel where the likes of Wozniacki and McIlroy were staying.
It was a beautiful summer's evening. On my half-mile jog to the Western Lawns I passed a couple of leggy and well-fit tennis players going at quite a lick running with their barrel-chested, Marine-like personal trainers sticking alongside them. They looked fearsome and pretty no-nonsense - the sort of guys who you would not say "no" to.
I skirted the bandstand which was bursting at the seams on a summer's evening with a full house listening to the brass band strike up some familiar tunes.
And for those who skipped paying for comfortable seats on the balcony of the bandstand, they had grabbed promenade benches within easy hearing distance, nursing boxes of fish and chips on their laps with a strong smell of vinegar wafting in the air surveying the majestic seaside scene.
Later, as the night drew in, fireworks lit up the sky as they do every Wednesday during the summer.
It was a picture-perfect evening and Eastbourne at its finest.

WHILE tennis has dominated much of our newspaper's coverage this week, it has been totally overshadowed by the Jeremy Forest court case.
He's the 30-year-old Maths teacher who ran off with a 15-year-old pupil at his school in Eastbourne last year and went on the run with her for seven days, until they were picked up by French police in Bordeaux.
Forrest was jailed for five-and-a-half years at Lewes Crown Court yesterday after being found guilty of child abduction by a jury - he also later pleaded guilty to five charges of having sex with a child.
Our website and Facebook page has gone mental with comments. Some had sympathy for Forrest suggesting the sentence was too harsh wondering how the Eastbourne teacher got five-and-a-half years for something which was clearly an offense in the eyes of the law, but which was consensual. Yet TV presenter Stuart Hall was jailed for 15 months after admitting abusing 13 girls, the youngest of which was aged just nine-years-old.
I heard one lawyer on the radio last night suggest this discrepancy was because of the historic nature of Hall's offences and because, up until 1985 when the offence was known as indecent assault, sentencing was different, and less severe. I still can't work out why today's sentencing guidelines did not apply to Stuart Hall.
The national media were all over this story like a rash. Once again, they distinguished themselves in the lead-up to the case by badgering friends of the 15-year-old and knocking on doors with open chequebooks for any dirt they could dig up. Talk about ethics, this was journalism at its lowest.
The irony of this case is that we weren't able to name the teenage girl, even though we identified her and carried photographs of her when she disappeared with Forrest last autumn. The law is a bizarre animal when it tries to put a lid back on the genie's bottle when anyone with a Google search can find out who she is.
Embarrassingly, Sussex Police inadvertently revealed the girl's family name at a press conference after the trial. There were plenty of red faces and a hasty media advisory sent out:
GUIDANCE FOR MEDIA
Media are advised that following the guilty verdict of Jeremy Forrest a statement was read on the steps of Lewes Crown Court on behalf of the mother of the victim. At the beginning of the statement the name of the mother was clearly audible and there was heckling from the crowd gathered outside which named the girl. There are court restrictions in place which prevent the naming of the victim, or any information.
In truth, this was a fascinating and absorbing story to cover, one all journalists love to report.
The women in our office were really impressed with the revelation that Forrest was an eight times a night lover - the fellas in the office just broke out in a sweat merely thinking about it!

FINALLY, it was hard not to raise a smile at the plight of one of my work colleagues this week.
She's due to head off on a jaunt to Ireland later this month, but this week was alerted to discover that her teenage son has arranged a party while his mum is away and advertised it on Facebook!
Fortunately, she was tipped off by the mothers of a couple of his school friends who wondered what was going. Afterwards, my friend was fairly laid back about it and saw the funny side after having an "interesting chat" with her son.

Only the other week, a police helicopter was scrambled to help disperse gate-crashers after a party at a house on a private estate in Surrey got out of hand. Unsurprisingly, the party had been advertised on Facebook.
Objects were thrown as police officers with dogs arrived at the home in Copthorne near Gatwick Airport, where almost 150 people had turned up uninvited to the party being held in the garden while the teenage host's parents were on holiday. http://news.sky.com/story/1101790/gatecrashed-facebook-party-ends-in-carnage
Fortunately, there will be no repeat in Eastbourne.
Police have said they're going to keep an eye on the house while she is away - now that would have been a heck of a story, and one big teenage headache!