RELATIONSHIP ADVICE FROM A CHILD: The other day Anna and I fell out. It does happen occasionally, and if the truth be known I can’t even remember what it was about.
But we were eating lunch at the time, and the net result was Anna left the dining table.
Amelie is clearly wise beyond her years. She leaned back in her chair, put down her knife and fork, and offered her words of wisdom.
“Now look Daddy, Mummy was already sad and now you’ve just made her sadder. If I was you I would go upstairs, give her a kiss and a cuddle and make sure she is alright.”
Sound advice from a four-year-old. But then she picked up her cutlery again, adding: “Or she might just be hungry.” Perhaps that was nearer the mark.
HIDE AND SEEK: The favourite game in our house is hide and seek, by far. But the girls are just rubbish – they cannot keep quiet to save their lives, and if you don’t find them in the first room you look they just shout ‘I’m here’.
And the other day I hid in the wardrobe.
They just could not find me. Amelie even looked in the wardrobe, stared straight at me, and then closed it. I think she just saw some clothes – and didn’t see the person within them.
And the other day we were out for a walk on a River Severn flood plain when they suddenly became desperate to play hide and seek.
There was just grass for miles around, with the odd tree. Hardly hide and seek territory. But they were determined. Determined to hide, even though there was clearly nowhere to hide.
And they still couldn’t find each other...
GAVIN: Sometimes I wonder what the Powys sporting world makes of our sports reporter Gavin Grosvenor.
I just overheard the following conversation, in which he was attempting to establish the identity of someone in an action shot. “He’s a big lad, it has to be said. Have you seen Lord of the Rings? He looks like a Proudfoot, one of the Hobbits.”
Incredibly, the person immediately came back with a name...
Earlier in the day I heard him tell someone the person looked like Beppe Di Marco. Is Powys just full of sportsmen who are equally insane?
He’s just described a girl as having hair which was ‘not short short, but not long long’. That will be medium length then will it?
What’s often more entertaining is when he describes people from a black and white print out of a photo. Invariably they have dark hair – and invariably sports sub Barry Hancock will sit there and point out that if he looks at the picture in colour it might be a little more help...
But my favourite Grosvenor moment will take some beating. That would be the day he urged a local football team manager to help the side return to the Hacienda days. For anyone stumped by this, he actually meant halcyon...
Mind you, 1980s drug-fuelled hedonism Manchester style might breath life into an otherwise dull Spar Mid Wales League game.
TRAFFIC: It’s impossible to hear the words rant anywhere in Montgomeryshire at the moment without hearing it closely followed by the words Newtown, traffic and usually Tesco.
It beggars belief that it’s reached this stage. People are paid handsomely to design traffic flow models for towns and cities far bigger than Newtown – and they generally get it right.
So what has gone so spectacularly wrong?
More to the point, who pays to put it right. Presumably Tesco are out of the equation, as they fulfilled their planning obligations by paying to have the work done in the first place. I could be wrong, but I’m sure it’s not their fault that it’s made things worse rather than better.
So that leaves Powys County Council and the Welsh Assembly to fight it out. It’s a council highway but at the same time it’s the main drag from north to south Wales – pretty crucial to all things traffic not just in Mid Wales, but arguably for Wales as a whole. Try to get from north to south Wales avoiding the Newtown area and it’s a pretty long way round.
Maybe it’ll be the next adventure on a bike for Ewan MacGregor?
Anyway, all told, it can only add massive weight to the demand for a bypass to be built for the beleaguered town sooner rather than later...