KEEP THE PRIDE CAMPAIGN

It is all about looking at the issues affecting our urban heartland and turning the spotlight on the great and the good of those communities as they tackle the problems of 21st-century living.

We will be homing in on those trying to make a difference in an environment where many are living on or just above the poverty line.

The headline topics are the standard of housing, providing activities for children, community facilities, unemployment, drugs and general lawlessness, as well as issues about schools and health.

This week, the subject is Millbrook, an area which has been much in the news recently.

Today, Guy Woodford writes about his experience of spending 24 hours on the estate, and on Tuesday Ali Kefford examines the role of the church in the community.

On Wednesday, Vicki Green focuses on a drop-in centre for young mums and dads, and on Thursday Tom Husband details how sport is playing an important part in providing an outlet for the youth of Millbrook.

Crime reporter Sarah Cole looks at policing in Millbrook and talks to some of the bobbies about the role they play in the community.

On Saturday, Vicki Green spotlights three families in Millbrook and talks to them about the issues that are important to them.

The Echo will be following up in the coming weeks by widening the brief to cover other communities. Our aim is to look at what is going on there and to meet the people who are meeting the issues head-on, bringing in initiatives which can make a difference.

We would like to hear from you. What do you see as the main issues and what could be done to make the quality of life better? Are you involved in a scheme that is having a major impact in your neighbourhood? Is there someone who is carrying the beacon for your community and is helping to turn things around?

If you have a story, contact Guy Woodford on 023 8033 7757 or Vicki Green on 023 8042 4761.

The good, the bad and the ugly by Guy Woodford

CHARLES Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities; I'm writing A Tale of Two Millbrooks.

Having spent 24 hours in the company of the Green family from Watts Close I can honestly say I've gone through just about every emotion: from joy and laughter to frustration and anger.

First the bad tale.

It's 7pm on Hallowe'en night. Yvette Green has recently returned from a couple of hours' trick-or-treating with children Cassandra, 12, Abigail, ten, and Emilie, 5, their grandma, Mo Simmons, boyfriend Neil Cattermole's son Peter, 16, and yours truly. Her phone rings. Within seconds her smile turns into a look of horror.

"Stay there, Mum. I'm coming in the car."

Joining Yvette in her car, I learn that Mo has been hit by a brick and a barrage of rotten eggs thrown by teenage louts as she walked along Green Lane towards her Millbrook Towers home.

We spot her. The car screeches to a halt and we jump out to check on Mo. She is in tears and is visibly shaken.

"There was a whole group of them," says Mo. "They were calling me Nark and a grass. I recognised one of them but I don't know his name."

After phoning the police, the three of us get back in Yvette's car and start to look for the youths who so callously set upon Mo. They had disappeared.

We drive back to Millbrook Towers and make sure Mo is safely inside before returning to Watts Close. Yvette is understandably seething with anger.

"I told Mo she was putting herself up for a fall given all the work she was doing to improve the area. There are some people who see her talking to councillors and the police at public meetings and think she is grassing them up.

"All she wants to do is make her estate a better place to live in. Well, I think someone else is welcome to do it if this is what response you get."

Back home the children are anxiously waiting for news of Mo's health. Yvette's boyfriend, Neil, has now returned home from his job as a Hampshire Ambulance paramedic.

Yvette talks to the children.

"She's shaken but back home now. The police have told her they'll send someone round. Mind you, we don't know the names of the youths or where they live so I don't know what they can do.

"I want to ring their necks."

Neil gives Yvette a hug of support and shakes his head after taking another draw on his cigarette.

"There are five problem families in Millbrook," he tells me. "All the hassle around here stems from them. Everyone else is just trying to get on with their lives respecting their neighbours."

Now for the good tale - well, good if you enjoy dressing up for Hallowe'en.

It's 1.30pm on October 31, 2002. Emilie and Abigail have been transformed into witches, Peter into a skeleton and Cassandra has become the devil. Now it was time for this cynical Daily Echo reporter to be turned into a Hallowe'en horror show.

As the face paint was applied by what must, by now, have been an exhausted Yvette, I could hear the children sniggering.

Cassandra, a Regent's Park Girls School pupil, piped up: "Guy, you look really funny." I was supposed to be Count Dracula, not a comedy act!

If my family and friends could see me now.

"Come on, Mummy. Let's go trick-or-treating now." Little Emilie is all dressed up in her Hallowe'en outfit and ready for some door-knocking action.

Of the first few houses we try, the occupants are all out at work. But it's not long before the loot starts coming in - in the form of sweets.

"This is great fun," says an enthusiastic Emilie. Part of our trick rather than treat armoury are cans of party string spray. After one grumpy man told us to "go away", it was too much of a temptation not to use the spray. But maybe we shouldn't have sprayed it on the porch CCTV camera.

"Cheers a lot," said Emilie after getting even more tasty sweets to shovel into her Winnie the Pooh bag. "I bet you wish Hallowe'en was every day," I said to her. "Yeah," said Emilie, sporting a big grin.

It had been a lot of fun but upon our return home it was time to get down to the real business of counting out our stash. For the record my Hallowe'en haul comprised:

A packet of fun gums

A Mars bar

A Milky Way

A Snickers

A chocolate bar called Rocky

Raspberry Millions

Five boiled sweets

Four bonbons

Yvette had done really well herself. Not in terms of her sweet stockpile, but the fact that she had kept going after a painful visit to the doctor's on Hallowe'en morning to have a course of injections for "tennis elbow".

"My right arm hurts like hell," she tells me. "I'll just have to grin and bear it. I hate needles though."

As for Abigail, a pupil at St Mark's Junior School, Shirley, Cassandra and Emilie, a Banister Infants School pupil, half-term was turning into quite a good jaunt.

On Friday afternoon the Greens would be heading off to London for the weekend for a trip that would include a visit to the London Dungeons.

"I can't wait," said Cassandra, breaking her concentration from the Tekken game she was playing with Abigail on the family Play Station.

After being thoroughly beaten at the game - which involves your chosen warrior trying to beat up your opponent's by kicking, punching or even sword-chopping them to death, it was time for bed - or the sofa, in my case.

A breakfast of cereal and toast was wolfed down and then it was time for a little bit of This Morning with Fern Britton and Philip Schofield. I wonder where John Leslie has got to?

Soon it was time for the Greens to depart for London and for me to say my goodbyes. Oh, and to attempt, once again, to get rid of my Dracula disguise.

I had enjoyed getting an insight into day-to-day life in Millbrook. Unfortunately, as I thought of how Yvette's mum Mo must be feeling, I had been left with a rather unsavoury taste in my mouth.