A water tower has come alive to talk to locals and dispense

worldly wisdom.

After months of blogging as himself, resident Terry Duffelen

has also taken on the guise of one of the borough's most

“iconic” buildings to reach the masses.

Now Terry, from South Croydon, hopes the blog - and the

tower - will take on a life all its own as more and more

readers tune in to hear the 'building' talking about its life,

views and experiences.

Terry, who also blogs for our website

www.thisiscroydon.co.uk, started the stream on microblogging

website Twitter in May.

So far it has only 14 'followers' - subscribers who sign up

to regularly read it.

“I consider myself to be satirical so the idea was to

produce something that perhaps satirises Croydon as well as the

Twitter culture to a certain extent.”

The blog, officially titled the Croydon Watertower Social

Media Fiction Project - was inspired by another internet blog

written by Tower Bridge.

Terry hopes that once his followers swell, the blog could

become a home of satirical comment and resident

participation.

Terry, 39, said: “I probably see it as a reflection of

myself, a grumpy-ish, quite bewildered personality. I just

thought it would be funny.

“I want people to find it funny first of all. If I can say

something big then that's great but I would prefer it if people

had a laugh.”

His idea is that a narrative might develop for what is a

completely fictional story spun out by Terry as the tower.

He is hoping other Twitter users post replies to his blogs

and he thinks people could even start being creative with their

postings themselves.

“Much of this depends of what happens with people's

feedback.

“I can't legislate for what they're going to say. It might

not work and people might not want to buy into it.

“A different form of story telling is, I suppose, ultimately

the aim.

“But I suppose it's up to them. If they're just amused by it

that's fine but if they start making up their own things then

they can.”

Asked why he chose the tower, which lives in the grounds of

Park Hill park in central Croydon, he said it was one of the

nicer buildings around.

“It's quite an attractive, quirky building. Given that

Croydon doesn't have many historic buildings it's quite

iconic.

“It's the kind of place you see when you are driving around

sometimes and you can't actually associate it with where it

is.”

*To follow Croydon Water Tower click on the link to the

right.

Some of the watertower's words of

wisdom

Yes it's true. I am Banksy. I'm just not into body art is

all.

Feeling the cool breeze... chaos as teens can't hold beer...

I'm not cleaning up.

Croydon historic buildings flash mob this Saturday. Stay

away from the town centre if you don't want to get

squished.

Spent weekend at @croydon_nick after historic buildings

flashmob ended in disaster. There's a giant tagging device

strapped around me. Ouch!