A tale of two crimes

A snapshot of recession-hit, ‘why should I care about you?’ Britain at the end of January 2012.

 I began this week with a visit to a lady who I believe is going to do an enormous amount for the cause of naturism in this country. I won’t name her, because this blog post isn’t about her, but anyone who has any involvement with me on Facebook and Twitter won’t find it too difficult to work out her identity.

 We talked for hours on Monday afternoon and only a prior engagement in Tamworth forced me to end the conversation; she is enthusiastic, hugely intelligent, determined....just the kind of person British Naturism needs.

 We had never met before Monday but by the end of the day we were Facebook friends and following each other on Twitter.

 Then, on Tuesday, she posted on FB that another motorist had smashed into the back of her Smart car, crushing the rear panel, then driven off without reporting the incident.

 She can’t afford to claim on her car insurance, because it would put her premiums through the roof, so she will drive around in a bashed-up car for the foreseeable future until she can find a way to get the panel replaced.

 CCTV? Yes, there was a camera in the vicinity but it was pointing away from the scene of the crime so is no help whatever.

 Crime? Yes, that is what this was. The perpetrator has presumably given no thought whatsoever to the consequences for the car’s owner and not felt the need to own up to their actions. Thought for other people doesn’t come in to the mind of people who do things like this. Getting away from the scene as fast as possible so that their thoughtlessness/stupidity/ignorance doesn’t come back to haunt them is the only thing they think about.

 Fast forward to Tamworth town centre on Friday morning. With the sun not yet risen, a hard-working conscientious citizen opens their living-room curtains to start another day and realises that an ornament which has graced their garden for nearly two years has vanished. Next to where it stood when they went to bed the night before is a trail of telltale footprints.

 The citizen’s partner (your blogger) rises from his bed and spends the next hour combing every garden, bush, tree, wastebin shed, dustbin within half-a-mile of their home, looking for any sign of the missing ornament.

 Sadly, there is none.

 The ornament (a carbon-fibre statue of an English bulldog, since you ask) would cost around £40 to replace and it was almost in my mind to do so before Mrs W came home from work. But why should I? Why should I give people who have no thought for the property of other citizens the satisfaction that I had to put myself out and spend my hard-earned money to replace something they had stupidly and, probably, drunkenly stolen?

 It should be said that Warrillow Towers has been in this part of Tamworth town centre for nearly 17 years and this is the first incidence of crime we have suffered. But that is not the point. The point is that this country is creating a generation of people who probably think that stealing our ornament is funny; that smashing into my friend’s car, driving off and leaving her to face the consequences is not their problem.

 Well, it isn’t and it is. This country has to get back to a position where we all have respect for each other and each other’s property. We’re light years away at the moment, in my view. There are a million reasons for that, most of which David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and any other cosseted Home Counties-based politician have no idea how to tackle.

Rail, ale and a great day out

It’s 6am on Saturday January 7. Along with the rest of the Tamworth FC Real Ale Crew, I’m heading for Liverpool - via Birmingham.

 “You’re going the wrong way!’ I hear you cry. But wait.....there is method in our madness. The Lambs are, of course, due to play Everton in the third round of the FA Cup. Along with the 8-900 diehard fans, several thousand Tammies who have never/rarely seen the team play before are going to be at Goodison Park - and it seems as if most of them will be on the 7.30am train to Stafford (‘change at Stafford for services to Liverpool Lime Street’ as that nice lady  who does the station announcements has it).

 So the nine-strong RAC have a plan - the 7.09 to Birmingham means we can join the Liverpool train when it leaves New Street, at least guaranteeing us a seat. 

 That proved a wise idea because when it pulled in at Stafford, roughly 300 Tammies, most carrying bottles of Budweiser or cans of Stella, charged into the carriages.

 Now it wasn’t the quietest train journey I’ve ever had, but neither was it the rowdiest - and when we got to Lime Street, our different groups went our different ways. They headed off in search of the nearest Wetherspoon’s while we began a pub crawl which I definitely aim to repeat in the near future.

 The game? Oh, you know what happened. Tamworth played one of the best 90 minutes I’ve ever seen from a Lambs team and were heading for a deserved draw when, as a Villa fan I know put it, Everton’s Royston Drenthe hit the ground ‘just as you’re taught to fall over for a penalty when you’re on £30k a week’.

 Enough of that, then. The club banked a handy six-figure cheque and the town got a weekend of great publicity. 

 So back to the pub crawl. After breakfast and a rather wind-battered stroll around Albert Docks, we were off to Dale Street, the middle of the city’s business district and, it seems, home to some of its’ finest pubs. At 11.01, we were in the Ship and Mitre - 13 handpulls, separate pumps for foreign beers and four, yes, four floor-to-ceiling fridges full of continental bottled beers.

 We could have stayed all afternoon and one day, I will - but a stone’s throw down the road was the Vernon Arms. A proper old street-corner local, it had half-a-dozen real ales including a rum porter from Boggarts Brewery which tasted as if someone had made what is already a distinctive brew and then hurled three shots of rum in the glass. Fantastic.

The pub was also showing live football but as the American corporate giant which holds the TV rights to the FA Cup wouldn’t approve, we’ll draw a veil over that.

 Another few steps down the road to Thomas Rigby’s, which had the great advantage of having another pub, the Lady of Mann, in its’ back yard (the two share an outside courtyard and drinkers can stroll out of the back door of one pub and in through the front door of the other - perfect).

 Then, it was round the corner to the Lion Tavern where, as the CAMRA Good Beer Guide rightly notes, the pork pies were as good as the ale. 

 Pre-match prep completed at just after 2pm, our party quickly found three taxis for the £6 journey to Goodison Park - split nine ways, that was amazing value.

 Our cunning plan for after the game involved avoiding the 1805, the last direct train back to Tamworth, or so we thought, leaving the hordes to hurry home while we waited for the 1846 (change at Stafford and Birmingham for Tamworth) and took a bus journey back into the city for the White Star, just up the road from the Cavern Club (Apparently, a famous 60s beat combo have their roots around this part of the city). 

 Rather than music, the White Star deals in boxing and shipping memorabilia and still full of adrenalin, we could have stayed longer - but there was a train to catch and one final pub - the Cains-owned Dr Duncan’s by Lime St station. Finally, we had found a loud and rowdy venue but then, it was early on a Saturday night in Liverpool by now.

 That’s not to denigrate the beer quality, by the way; this was just as good as anywhere else and the nine of us can say we did not have a bad pint all day.

 And to top off the good news, the 1846 unexpectedly stopped at Tamworth, delivering us home just after 8pm. The perfect end to a perfect day - and no-one even felt inclined to argue about refereeing decisions.

A Christmas birthday party

Christmas excess was cancelled at Warrillow Towers this year; no presents, no decorations, no tree, no cards (to those of our friends who sent them - we will be making amends in the new year).

 There isn’t even that much alcohol in the house :( :(

 You only have to read the post below to realise why, of course; the afterglow of Sun Eden meant we were in no mood to prepare for winter festivities; summer, sun and the glories of the South African veld, still in our minds as we head into 2012, hopefully won’t go away for a while yet.

 That’s not to say that we didn’t have a family Christmas; although Mr W senior lives in Spain and is only arriving in the UK for a three-week visit on the day I write this, Christmas on the other half of the family was a very special time. My mother-in-law has tried for years to conceal her true age but an unfortunate encounter with her medical records this spring confirmed that she was, in fact, facing her ??th birthday.

 What made this even more special is that she was born on December 24. A perennial pain for those of us faced with buying two lots of presents for two consecutive days, the Yuletide financial grief is added to by the fact that one of her sons was born on December 16.

 Nevertheless, this year, we felt it was right to push the boat out for a special party, to be held eight days prior to the birthday. Relatives from the wilds of the Cotswolds and the far west of Ireland were contacted and cajoled into making plans to visit; friends in Tamworth were alerted; a venue was booked - and everyone was sworn to secrecy.

 Mrs W, of course, lay at Sun Eden for a fortnight, worrying whether anyone would bother to turn up on the big day and how and whether her mother could be cajoled out of the house. When the morning of December 17 dawned wet, cold and miserable, it seemed her fears might come true but when the phone started ringing mid-morning with calls from relatives checking that everything was still OK, she started to calm down.

 And we will never know whether Ma had the slightest inkling that something was going on.

 In the end, everyone played a blinder. The birthday girl’s niece and her husband arrived from Ireland while her sister looked a different woman from the sorry figure who lay in a hospital bed, gravely ill, earlier in the year; Mrs W’s brothers were on top form and the restaurant owner was totally relaxed about us sitting down to eat 40 minutes later than planned, then having to push an ever-so-slightly relaxed group of people out of the door four hours later.

 It was one of those afternoons which reminded me that you really must look after your parents as they get older. My own mother died at just 49 years and seven days, while Mrs W’s dad tragically got to nowhere near that age.

 Occasions like Ma’s birthday party are where lifelong happy memories are made. However much trouble planning such events may seem beforehand, you never know when it might be the last big thing you do for your parents.

 We wouldn’t have missed it for the world and the stunned, delighted, look on Ma’s face when she walked into the restaurant will stay with me for just as long as anything we did in South Africa.

 And it was definitely worth cancelling Christmas for. Happy New Year, everyone.

Two weeks of magical moments at Sun Eden

I have a pair of old slippers. The soles are coming apart, the inner lining is breaking up. They’ve been lying at the end of the bed for three days when I decide to tidy the room and throw them away.

 I casually mention my plan to Mrs W, who is standing not two feet away; half-looking at her and half-looking at my slippers, I plunge my hand into the shoe.

 Thirty seconds later, when I have finished screaming and scraped myself off the ceiling, I begin the search for the large brown frog who had been snoozing inside, cosy and undisturbed.

Welcome to South Africa; a country of wild contradictions, of boundless beauty, of unbelievable wildlife and, for the most part, genuinely friendly people.

 We are enjoying the holiday of a lifetime at Sun Eden (www.suneden.com), a naturist resort some 30 miles from Pretoria and 70 miles north of Johannesburg, deep in the bushveld of Gauteng (formerly Northern Transvaal). The nearest supermarket is at least 15 miles away, the new Dinokeng Big 5 game reserve sits just next door, supply of hot water to our otherwise outstanding chalet is hit-and-miss, to put it mildly.

 But the whole place is wonderful, even the frog (who vanished behind the king-sized bed and re-emerged unharmed 24 hours later, to be gently dropped into a nearby mud pool) and the shongololos (see here - http://www.focusonpictures.com/zuidafrika/insectplus/insect5.htm), brightly coloured millipedes who are ubiquitous on the floors and walls.

 After a trying couple of months, it would have been all too easy for Mrs W and I to throw off all our clothes, pull up the sunloungers, pour a cold drink and spend 12 days watching the warm sun drift across the sky, with occasional visits to the swimming pool five minutes’ walk away.

 Had we been on desert-like Fuerteventura, we would have done. But you can’t come to a continent as magical as Africa and lie in the sun for 12 days.

 So we visited the Cullinan diamond mine, where some of the largest precious stones in the world, including some which lie in the British Crown jewels, have been found; we enjoyed a couple of quite spectacular drives around the game reserve, rattling around in the back of a truck while experienced game rangers pointed out wildebeest and zebra and giraffe and rhinos and some of South Africa’s thousands of bird species; we visited Mahela View lion camp, where the owner keeps three tame lions out in the wild while carrying out an extensive programme of educating tourists about this most magical of animals; we even enjoyed a wondrous day at the Tranquility Spa lodge (www.Tranquillityspalodge.co.za) , a new venue in a valley at the side of the Bobbejaansberg mountains with a fantastic view over the African landscape.

 The latter supplied two of the most memorable moments of the holiday. The owners, a former airline pilot and his Welsh-born wife are friends of our hosts at Sun Eden and we were invited, on just our second night in SA, to his 60th birthday party.

 As we enjoyed drinks on the terrace and watched a perfect sun gently slip below the horizon, a giraffe appeared on the other side of a fence at the end of the garden, gave us a disinterested glance and slowly bent his enormous front legs to drink from a pool of water.

 It was a breathtaking moment, a birthday party of a dozen people watching quietly as one of nature’s most extraordinary creations stood not 50 feet away in his natural habitat. At the time, I cursed myself for not bringing my camera; it was only when we got home that night that I realised it had been in Mrs W’s handbag all evening.

 The other great moment? We took advantage of one of Tranquillity’s reasonably-priced full day spa packages. If you’ve never spent a hour sitting nude and sipping cold lager with your other half in a jacuzzi in the spacious grounds of an African bush lodge before taking lunch and then undergoing an extraordinary full body massage, it is an experience I recommend wholeheartedly.

 Contradictions? This part of Gauteng is predominantly Afrikaans and although we did not discern any real sense of animosity between white and black neighbour (in fact, it was often the opposite), we didn’t have to look far to see white farmers living in opulent surroundings while their black employees went home to little more than tin shacks.

 We drove back to Johannesburg Airport down a four-lane highway which was quieter than an English country road on a summer afternoon, yet watched black workers walking miles down dirt tracks to catch one of the state-sponsored buses which ferries them to and from the big towns. And we were, of course, many miles from any of the cities where I am sure you will see a different South Africa - the one where the Minister of Justice has just been jailed for 15 years for corruption, for instance.

 Of course, this blog wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the naturist side of our holiday. For obvious historical reasons, naturism is still relatively new in South Africa; Sun Eden is one of just a handful of venues although a new British-owned resort, Vasnat, opened up in Cape Town while we were in the country.

 Strict attitudes to the human body, which were part of the religions of most South Africans for years if not centuries, are fading away and we found the members and guests at Sun Eden just as relaxed, friendly and non-judgmental as naturists all around the world; indeed, we can already count some of them as friends.

 And there is something about Africa which lends itself to naturism. Sitting in the garden in the nude, enjoying a vast breakfast, while impalas and springboks grazed in the grounds and brightly-coloured birds twittered in the trees is another great memory; South Africa’s fondness for braais (barbecues) meant we spent many an evening chatting outside into the late hours with an iced glass of wine in one hand, a barbecue pork chop in the other and not a stitch of clothing to be seen amid smiling, happy people. 

 We had no preconceptions about South Africa but now we have no doubt that we want to go back to the veld. Sun Eden, to which you can book accommodation direct without going through a British travel agent, is the perfect place to do so.

Martin goes on military manoeuvres

I’m joining five other people in staking out a white brick house where we know a group of terrorists have been hiding. We’re armed to the teeth with pistols, a machine gun, grenades and flares.

 Lying on the floor with our guns trained on a clearing below us, we can see some of the bad guys gathered about 30 yards in front of us, standing around a Land Rover, talking and smoking. As far as we know, they are oblivious to our presence.

 Suddenly, slightly to our left and about four feet in front of us, there is a rustling in the trees, a loud noise and something comes bursting into view.

 Terrorist, escaping hostage or bird? We have a split-second to decide. 

  Startled by the noise and keen to prove ourselves in military combat, my partner and I let fly several rounds from our pistols.

 It’s a good job they were blanks and the whole thing was a teambuilding exercise, or the pheasant which we shot would have been on the main course of that evening’s menu at our hotel.

 Welcome to Blackdown UK Corporate Training. The house is not in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else where Her Majesty’s Forces have been doing business in the past 20 years. It’s in a forest in the East Midlands where Blackdown, a company formed by a group of ex-Army veterans and business professionals, has its’ base.

 Blackdown, as their training brochure puts it ‘provide quality training products and services by taking the military way of thinking and applying it to business scenarios.’

 In other words, they train people to expect the very unexpected and how to cope when it happens.

 I’m on a media day which is giving a group of journalists a taste of Blackdown’s itinerary. The really adventurous can take their survival expeditions to Sweden and France, but we will stay in this forest for a day which will prove unforgettable enough.

 The first thing to know is how to survive in the open. How long can you last without air, shelter, food or water? Our instructor Phil, the epitome of an Army man standing well over 6ft tall and with the archetypal military haircut, tells us the first thing we will need is shelter, so our two two-person teams are sent out into the forest with a tent sheet, bungee clips and pegs and told we have five minutes to construct our own shelter.

 I’m afraid to say your blogger’s team was still working out what was what when the whistle blew. As Phil pointed out, in a real scenario, it could have been snowing or raining sideways, we could have been caught in a sandstorm...we could have been dead.

 Having learnt how to use a short-wave radio (got that bit!), we moved on to orienteering, finding our way round what seemed a vast expanse of forest with nothing more than a map and compass. Given time, I’m sure I would have worked it out but as Phil’s colleague Ben (a pocket battleship of a man) pointed out, in real life time is the thing you may not have.

 After lunch came the bit we had secretly all been waiting for - pistol training and close-quarter battle. I quickly got the hang of handling and firing the pistols so, with paintball weapons taking the place of machine guns, it was on to close-quarter battle and into the ‘kill house.’

 This is a converted two-storey cattle shed with life-size pictures of the bad guys (and their hostages) scattered throughout. Can you tell the difference between terrorist and hostage in the dark, with a split-second’s notice, with guns and grenades going off all around you?

 I did surprisingly well, even managing to get off a couple of rounds while sprawled on the floor in the dark after stumbling over my own shoelaces. Unfortunately, when the lights went on and we debriefed, we discovered that in my adrenalin-fuelled enthusiasm to shoot at something, anything, I’d killed the hostage as well as the terrorist.

 Never again will I ask how something like that happens.

 Finally, on to what Blackdown call ‘Vehicle Contact Drills’; in other words, what to do when your car is ambushed. With Phil and Ben driving the cars and doing most of the firing, we learnt that priority No 1 for a VIP in this case (think Wills and Kate suddenly being collared by Al Qaeda) is to get the heck out of the car, roll away as fast as you can and let the security experts do their jobs.

 We had taken in an enormous amount of information in the last five hours but now came the finale - the bit we’d all been waiting for, the simulated battle.

 I won’t give away any secrets, in case this piece tempts you to get in touch with Blackdown and try it for yourself but highlights included running away from an ambushed car and heading straight into a bush full of thorns; gathering our group together following the ambush and realising the spot we had chosen was a bog two feet deep in mud; stumbling down a bank and falling over (again) after a tree branch broke off in my hand and, of course, the unfortunate incident with the pheasant.

 I couldn’t walk for two days afterwards but it was worth it for an unforgettable experience which I highly recommend. Blackdown is not cheap but for companies looking for teambuilding days with a difference, I can’t imagine anything better. 

BlackdownUK can be contacted via www.blackdown-uk.com.

Real ale, real football and some really friendly welcomes

So there we were, 16 real ale-drinking Tamworth FC fans sitting in a pub deep in the Leicestershire countryside at 11am on Saturday, just about to tackle our opening pints of Wychwood Dogs’ B******s, when a white horse appeared in the road outside.

 We should have known it was going to be that kind of day.

 We were on our way to the FA Cup first-round tie between Tamworth and Hinckley United at the Greene King Stadium. The name gives you a clue as to why we were also on a meticulously-planned pub crawl.

 We wanted proper local beer in proper local pubs, offering a friendly welcome, either side of what was always going to be a testing 90 minutes against our neighbours from the league below Tamworth in the football pyramid.

 I had just raised the first glass to my lips at our opening venue when the horse and its’ owner appeared. I put down my pint, wandered outside and found that horse and owner were deep in conversation with a large brown spaniel and his owner - right in the middle of the road. ‘You don’t see that too often on the A5,” I mused, while becoming engaged in fascinating conversation with everyone involved.

 Eventually, the mare wandered off to her stables, I returned to finish my pint and the party headed for one of the highlights of the day - the new pub which Church End Brewery owns in......oh, I’m not telling you; if you’re interested, it’s not too hard to find.

 We found a wonderful welcome, some of the best beer in the Midlands and food that clearly had not come out of the microwave. Church End deserve enormous credit for this - even as the nights draw in, I urge you to venture into the countryside and give it a go.

 Our final pre-match venue had been warned in advance that we were coming and, rather than banning us or ordering up a contingent of Leicestershire’s finest to monitor us, had got in an extra barrel of beer. Should Hinckley win promotion this season, we’ll remember that gesture when planning next year’s trip.

 Which brings us to the match - and if I told you everything, I’d still be writing this time next week. So, in brief - Hinckley’s goalkeeper is sent off in the first half for kicking a Tamworth forward (who kicked him back and wasn’t punished); the referee tried to award a penalty to Tamworth for the above incident, having already given the hosts a free-kick because the Tamworth player had originally fouled the goalkeeper; Hinckley’s replacement No 1 played a blinder; all four goals came in the last 12 minutes with Tamworth equalising twice, the first time via a highly questionable penalty given for a ‘foul’ in the area by a referee who lost control early on; there was a minor brawl in the stands involving some teenage idiots; a fight broke out in the dugouts when some water was ‘allegedly’ thrown - and the winners of the replay on November 22 have to haul it all the way up the A1 to Gateshead in the second round.

 Your blogger will be on holiday in South Africa on that day......

 Pub Crawl, part two - We recovered from the game in an Everards’ pub which seems to be the highlight of its’ native village in the Leicestershire countryside. After games such as that, it often takes an hour or more to get rid of all the adrenalin and we could have happily stayed all night - but the man with the satnav and the schedule had other plans.

And so we were off to another pub which I will only refer to here as ‘The D&H in D.’ It didn’t look the sort of place that would greet 16 scruffy and fairly well-oiled oiks in Tamworth scarves and shirts and big coats but once again, I’ll remember it for the warmth of the welcome. Mrs W and I will certainly be paying a return visit to sample the menu. 

 There aren’t many places, even the finest CAMRA-recommended pubs, where the landlord collects empty glasses from your table and asks you if the beer was acceptable.

 Our day ended in the finest possible fashion, in the gentle care of Church End Brewery. First it was back to the country pub, then to the brewery tap, which I am happy to reveal is in Ridge Lane, near Atherstone. 

 If you can’t find the former, you should certainly visit the latter, where every one of the Church End range is on tap and you can look from the bar through large glass windows into the brewery plant itself.

 The replay of the football is on November 22 at The Lamb - sadly, there won’t be a replay of the crawl as your blogger lives five minutes from the ground.

 And as for Gateshead? Some of us will be at Sun Eden Naturist Resort in South Africa on that day - and with a game reserve next door, I suspect I might be watching something even more remarkable than white horses in the middle of the road. 

A week in the life

Any blogger or columnist will tell you that there are times when the words just flow from the brain.

 Then, there are times when you sit for hours staring at the computer, trying to dredge up a new topic or put a new twist on something you wrote about three weeks previously.

 Then, there are weeks when so much is going on that trying to put a structure to it all seems pointless.... such as the week your blogger is having.

 Here then, are a few random thoughts from six days in the life of a hard-working, positive- (and negative-) thinking, freelance journalist full of hope for the future, looking for a break and realising that the world is either a bitch or full of good, caring, people - depending on the moment.

Sunday - Thank the Lord for James Dyson, inventor of the eponymous vacuum cleaner. Pre-Dyson, seeing a nine-inch piece of string disappear through the front of the machine and up into the mechanism meant taking the machine apart to extract the string and hoping it all fitted together again thereafter. Post-Dyson, even I can unscrew a couple of fasteners, unclip the front, remove the offending item and resume vacuuming within 15 minutes.

 Monday - a thought, please, for a previous subject of this blog. In September, I wrote about the talking book group I attend and, in particular, the indefatigable 85-year-old lady who is a crucial part of the social glue which holds it together. As I write, she is making a 40-mile round trip to hospital for daily radiography sessions and, from all accounts, feeling extremely fed up about it. Some people deserve the prayers of all of us. She is one.

Tuesday - with two weeks to get the remaining contents of the winter edition of British Naturism to the typesetter, I suddenly remember the Radcliffe and Maconie show. Once a crucial part of my evenings when on Radio 2, it has somehow escaped me since decamping to the afternoons on Radio 6. Seeking a lift during my journalistic labours, I turn  on the digital radio - and find Craig b****** Charles filling in while they are on holiday.

 Wednesday - meet up with three former colleagues for a (very expensive and not very good) pint at one of our local hostelries. There is more than 100 years of journalistic experience around the table and I am the youngest of the quartet by a few years. For two hours, we have a laugh, share memories, talk about the collapse of the regional newspaper business..and ponder on the irony of rumours that our former employer is considering moving back into the city centre from which it decamped, with nary a thought for its’ staff, not much more than three years ago.

 Leave there for a meeting with the Tamworth FC Heritage Project Committee and the vice-chairman of Tamworth FC. We’re discussing how the mass of detail about the club’s history which we gathered can be used for the benefit of the next generation of TFC supporters. 

 For a few days after the Hall of Fame evening (discussed here in September), we were all exhausted by our labours - now, it seems that our enthusiasm has been refuelled.

 Thursday - A meeting of the Tamworth and District Tourism Association, a body designed to promote the interests of Tamworth and its’ businesses and draw more visitors into the town. We’ve just finished building a website which, if I may say so, is probably one of the best tourism websites around (but which I can’t tell you more about just yet!)

 A two-hour meeting leaves me enthused about the many good things Tamworth has to offer, yet infuriated that too many local businesses and people don’t seem equally inspired. From now, I will spend one day a week touring the town and promoting this website.

And today? Work on the magazine this morning, then a meeting this afternoon with a fascinating lady I met at my business breakfast group. She’s one of those sparky people who lights up a room just by walking in (being Irish probably has something to do with it!).

 I’m hoping she’ll help me continue the positive vibe I’ve felt for much of this week. I’m sure my friend from the book group wouldn’t want it any other way.