A Farewell to Oates: Adios, El Reg

<Gets his coat>

A quick note to say goodbye. Today is my last day at the Reg having written almost 5,000 stories, and edited thousands more.

I started in 2004 as one of three reporters in a small, grubby office in Brixton, south London. I leave a multi-tentacled organ with offices on Leicester Square, in San Francisco, New York and Sydney - and a freaking space programme.

It's been a pleasure mostly because of you lot, not to mention my colleagues of course. I've had amazing leads, suggestions, secret documents, and occasionally even compliments, from thousands of emails and reader comments.

Editing copy from the sharpest writers and working on info from some of the web's best-informed readers has been a joy.

Some random highlights from a seven-year tour:

• A Conradian voyage to the heart of darkness in search of Kurtz Lester and his insane plane of paper.
• Meeting the lady monks of Taiwan during a typhoon and earthquake.
• A demented week in Luxembourg for the Microsoft trial.
• Driving a Vulture-stickered £20 van across the Sahara and coaxing a 106-year-old Crestmobile from London to Brighton.
• Covering the trial of the tsunami hacker who wasn't really, but was still found guilty.
• Meeting a social network that signed up a whole country before anyone had even heard of Facebook.
• Breaking the story about the theft of the British National Party's membership list.

I'm hoping to reappear here from time to time but if you can't wait I'll be at johnpesky at yahoo dot co dot uk.

I'm considering getting internet access at home, it seems to be catching on, but in the meantime my local pub has Wi-Fi, opens at 9am, and has a full range of breakfast beers.

Goodbye and thank you very much for having me. ®