I am not even sure how it happened.

An accommodation provider, Kevin Dawson, came to The Advocate saying he was concerned with the rating system of some commercial properties and the membership structure at the Daylesford Information Centre.

Being a newspaper, we wanted to hear the other side and asked the council for a response. That was two weeks ago.

The first week went by with no contact. I then received a message to say that if we would wait one more week, a comment would be forthcoming.

Now the usual procedure is to run stories as soon as possible but Mr Dawson's complaints had been raised 12 months earlier and we believed a wait of another seven days to provide readers with the full story was the right thing to do.

So we waited another week - and again nothing. Not a call, not an email.

The Advocate's deadline is 5pm on Friday, so the story was duly written with the now quite common final sentence of "the council failed to respond by press time" and allocated for the front page. End of story - so to speak. But wait, there's more.

Last Monday, a good 48 hours plus after deadline, a council staffer rang to say a comment was winging its way via email within 30 minutes.

So, with generous thoughts, we waited, and waited, and waited. Again, nothing.

By mid-afternoon we had well finished the page, the front's always one of the last, only to be totally stunned by an email, sent about 2.35pm, with the council response in dot points.

Dutifully I wrote back it was unfortunately too late - and then the "disappointed" reply hit me.

Apparently the council was extremely disappointed in me, it had worked long and hard on creating the six or so dot points, and it would like me to reconsider.

I wrote again that it was definitely too late but I would be happy to run the comments the following week as a right of reply.

The staffer's reply was minimal. "Your call Donna."