Toilet/cottage for sale

This morning, I came across this article during my web-trawling.


It is a current trend to close public conveniences across North Wales, and other areas of the country, no doubt, because councils view it as a convenient way to save money. (You see what I did there?) This goes hand in hand with an expressed desire to encourage people for the rest of the world to visit Wales. One of the stated aims on this website is


'to adopt a customer-focused approach which understands and responds to market needs'.


Well, I don't know about you, but one of the things I view as pretty essential on a day out is somewhere reasonable to answer the call of nature and no, this does not include a hedge or nettle patch, which will be the only alternative in many places, if this policy of closing toilets continues. I have blogged before about the short-sighted custom of having public toilets closed on bank holidays, and that was back in 2004. At the current rate of closure, there will soon not be any left, open or closed, and that must surely have an impact on tourism and, as usual, it will be the disabled, elderly and people with children who will be hardest hit.

So, local councils of North Wales, what do you think people are going to do instead?

I leave it to your imagination, but the end result may not be pleasant!

Friends across the Pond

No, I'm not talking about friends in the USA, but in Canada, near Toronto, to be precise. Dale started his blog (now defunct) at about the same time as I started mine, 2004. It was called 'Musings from Mimico' and was full of beautifully written, reflective, often humorous posts, which I enjoyed reading and commenting on. He joined the list of 'Blogs I like to visit' on my sidebar and I joined his.

Fast forward to this summer and Dale and I were finally able to meet face to face, as he, his wife Colleen and daughter Ivy, made a trip over here, to spend a week in Wales, a week in the Lake District and a week in Scotland, where Colleen's family originated.

It's quite intriguing, meeting someone with whom you have been on 'writing terms' for so long. You have read and commented on things they have written about their lives, interests, travels, work and sometimes, problems, and they have done the same, so you have built up a friendship already and you feel as if you know that person pretty well. 

So, the time we spent together was filled with talk, laughter, catching up, asking questions and even, Dale got to have a tour round Keith's famous shed workshop! 

Even so, there were still so many things we didn't get round to talking about. Twelve years to catch up on is a lot of catching up! Maybe next time ...

When Colleen takes photos, she means business - with a tripod and remote control. 

 And here we all are!
(How did it happen that the men are sitting and we are standing?)

Paddy and Toby loved their Canadian neckerchiefs.

However, Toby did hear Colleen say that he was welcome to visit 'any time'. He is still waiting on the doorstep with his red spotted handkerchief on a stick over his shoulder ...

Maybe I'd better tell him to come back inside.

The power of Twitter

Since early June, the playing field at the back of our house has been sadly neglected. Rumour has it that the Council suddenly discovered that there was no longer enough money to cut the grass - anywhere. Twitter was full of tweets from locals complaining that grass verges, playing fields and other public spaces were growing wild, which in some cases, was potentially dangerous, as there were places where pulling out from a side road onto a main road was akin to playing Russian roulette, because it was impossible to see oncoming traffic over the grass on the verges.

Having tweeted myself to the Council about the parlous state of the playing field near us, and received no response, I decided to phone them instead. 

"If you were to put a small child down in that field," I said in my best deputy head voice, "You would have difficulty finding it again!"

The man on the other end of the phone remained unmoved and unconcerned.

"Well, I expect it's because of the cut-backs," he said. "I'll pass on your concern, but I don't know if it will do any good."

He was right. It didn't. Since then, the grass has been cut  just once, by a machine so small that it had a similar effect to cutting a lawn with a pair of nail scissors.  Even Toby got tired of having to jump around the field instead of charging round in circles, as he normally does.

At the same time, someone had decided that the only remaining refuse bin on the field could no longer be used to deposit bags of dog poo. They had already removed another bin some time ago, and according to one of the council workmen, they wanted to 'encourage' people to take their little plastic bags home with them. I don't think so, mate!
Back to Twitter, where someone had tweeted that the special dog fouling bins in another part of the area had not been emptied for some time and were now overflowing. My question to the Council was, why did that area have special bins and we didn't? The reply was that they no longer supply dog fouling bins, so the general bins can be used instead.

As far as I was concerned, that was permission to do what I had continued to do anyway, and use the general bin for Toby and Paddy's little plastic bags.

And the grass has been cut again. Success!