Greetings good merry folk of Olde Sheringham, and how the devil are you?  I do hope you have all recovered from the annual crush to purchase Mothering Sunday cards from Asda.   If you can actually find the relevant aisle under the mountain of George's Sunday best at the princely sum of £ 1.50 a pair.  Still I expect a greater number of you now will have to resort to these escapades as the up and coming British president.   Oops, slip of the tongue there, next candidate for premier, rammed home his message of past fiscal excellence and stealthily taxing us all to the hilt.  Doesn't it make you want to turn to religion?  Run off to the nearest church and settle onto a carved wooden pew.  There you could let the troubles of the day unfold as you listened to a nice little man playing on his organ.  Of the musical variety!  Of course.   Ah a lovely little bit of English tradition to enjoy for all time.  Or so you would think.  That is until those bureaucratic buffoons get there way and because of a new hair-brained directive they now expect every church to rip out it's organ pipes to satisfy some jumped up health and safety executive.  Oh yes this extremely dangerous and offensive commodity is supposed to be the lead the manufacture use in the making of the pipe. So dangerous in fact they want them ripped out as and when.  My point is this how in Gods name (if you pardon the blasphemy) does a hidden, usually 20 foot up in the rafters, pipe, pose a threat to anyone?  Except the odd angel or balloon enthusiast.  It's almost as baffling as how they're going to merge three police forces into one.  Just imagine it with all the cut backs in resources and equipment and all the extra "Special constables" on the streets; by the time they've crammed all those bobbies into a Vauxhall Nova on the Friday night cruise beat there'd be no room to put any arrested offenders.  An ideal solution there for keeping the prison population down then.  Talking of keeping things down, or in our case knocking them down, I see at long last the Beeston garage site has finally succumbed to the developers.  Whereupon there will be erected a small village of luxury play pens and rabbit hutches!  Sorry slip of the tongue again, I meant to say a lovely development of affordable housing.  But don't worry the stamp duty levy is bound not to effect anyone around here as you'll still have to fork out for that, along with the extra council, fag, booze, car road, and death duty taxes all of which have risen stealthily in real terms for years.  Blimey at this rate I won't even be able to buy my peerage soon!  In fact along with the Scottish parliament building and the new Wembley stadium the whole world seems to be collapsing except the banks' coffers.  And interestingly enough the other day Lloyds bank were advertising on the radio more branches for your convenience! Ho Ho Ho. April fool's day just came early! Never mind hey? Tesco is appealing! Well not it seems in every sense of the word but letters asking for support are still dropping through the odd letterboxes still so the saga lingers on.  Which is more than can be said of the winter as spring is supposed to have started with the equinox.  And as it passes we carry on into the realms of longer days with this turning back of the clock business.  And with every hour of beauty sleep lost I gain an extra wrinkle.  But I shall fear no more, and need no longer enlist the help of channel four's 10 years younger team as we have in Sheringham now, not one but a further three beauty parlours to indulge ourselves in. which, unfortunately states one of two things.  That is either the people of this town are becoming extremely affluent or we're just a load of vain old ugly wrinklies trying to deceive ourselves and everyone else of the obvious.

Now then Easter is upon us, the visitors are about to descend on us from afar, one side of the pavement in station road has been relayed.  Oh jubilation!  But how long will it be before the "chewing gummers" and the poo poo brigade make their mark? Me thinks it's about as inevitable as the 4x4 owners having to get even bigger models just to impress upon us locals that tractors and Nissan Micras went out of fashion with the threshing machine.  Still if you're one of the lucky owners of a Eco friendly micro car thingy that runs on Eco fuel and or electric, or better still hot air then the local council chamber would be a great place to fill up with fuel.  Never mind eh?  I think I'll take up the art of barometer making!  What's that?  The EU is abolishing that as well?  Is there nothing this country does that they don't want to stop?  Well apparently there is at several thousand a month and according to Europe they can come with their blessing.  And what's more there's no tax, duty, or refund policy!
Ta Ta for now. Take care now till next time Vic.

READERS LETTER

Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to an article in your Sheringham free paper, in particular 'hearsay'.  Never before have I been so incensed that I have felt the need to personally complain.  I refer particularly to the slanderous, ignorant abuse of the county council workmen who are repairing the pavements in Sheringham High Street.   Should 'Vic' ever get the chance to get off their typewriter from behind their cosy desk, in their nice warm office, maybe they would like to work alongside these men for the day and get some real experience of hard work.

At first I actually thought for once, that the public would give some gracious recognition for the hard work they do, but instead the workmen were totally slandered and most unfairly in my opinion.  The 'fellas' do not just 'clear orf' for a stiff drink, they were invited into P.H. premise for a cup of tea/coffee as they were working right outside and freezing cold!!!!.  The 'fellas' as you quote have to work in freezing conditions, have to take breaks in accordance with working time regulations, and have to follow stringent Health & Safety procedures.  I would also like to point out that while the majority of you are tucked up in bed, these men have also been out gritting and clearing your roads and then doing a full day's work also.  So a few late starts and early finishes are only taken to acommodate the winter maintenance routines.

The workmen involved have had to put up with a tirade of abuse directed at them, when actually it is the planners that should have the complaints they are the people responsible for making the decisions not the workmen.  They have had dogs urinating on their equipment, verbal abuse, and cars/lorries running through them, not a 'cushy' job as you quoted!

I would like to see your journalist trying to cut a flagstone by hand and make it fit!   There are a number of other council representatives who need to visit the site to ensure that the job is running to plan, who quite rightly may visit in the morning and then disappear, including Personnel, Health & Safety, Public relations and area personnel.

At the end of the day you should fell totally ashamed of yourselves, finding the time to ridicule hard working citizens working for the benefit of your town.  The town actually needs to continue to attract the 'third home owning, unappreciative visitors' as you describe them in order to maintain your local economy.

I hope the shop owners who have been very supportive in providing cups of tea and 'putting up' with the slight inconvenience also write in to counteract your totally ignorant, narrow minded views printed only with some hope of getting a 'laugh'.
Maybe 'Vic' would like to comment in person to these guys?  If so please contact me and I will arrange for you to spend some time with them, maybe a cup of tea?
Regards
Anonymous disgusted reader