Roads are only ever as safe as the people who use them. Which is why people who live near the Penny Pie Park gyratory are probably used to hearing papping horns from disgruntled drivers. As I’m up there every day walking, I can see patterns building up. Drivers coming from the motorway and wanting to go down Dodworth Road often don’t want to join the queue, so they use the middle lane and then, on the roundabout, do a hop into the left lane causing drivers already there to have to brake sharply. Naughty. And don’t get me started on those drivers who can’t tell the difference between a red light and a green light.
Outside Horizon especially, vans – especially – don’t even try and beat the amber, they push through on an established red, which is scary when you have one foot on the road because the ‘green man’ is lit. So, what I’m trying to say is, if you’re a pedestrian or a driver, do watch out for the nutters. It should be a safe and effective traffic route, but some people just have to make it difficult because – god forbid – they should arrive at their destination a minute later than they had anticipated.
Once again the Proud of Barnsley event showed us just what diamonds we have in the coalfields of the town. It is hard, as one of the judges, to decide between so many deserving people. None of us know until the actual night who has won as we vote blindly for our winners so it’s as big a surprise to us as to anyone else who gets the trophy and I like that. Mainly because I’m rubbish at keeping secrets.
I was delighted to see that BSARCS (Barnsley Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Services) received a statuette because they do some amazing work in helping people of all genders, of all ages escape horrific situations. You wouldn’t want to know what goes on behind some curtains, but thank goodness this organisation exists to help. Lisa Hammond, who goes far above and way beyond her duties in Tesco Stairfoot, and the two young heroes who helped to save the lives of their mother and aunt after they were stabbed.
What they must have gone through doesn’t bear thinking about and I’m glad to see they have returned to some normality. And the King of the Night was artist Ashley Jackson who received the new Michael Parkinson Award which honours a famous son or daughter of the town. I know how much it meant to him. Bless him, it was a complete surprise. He had been told he was there to present an award to me and he’d even written a speech for it. It was lovely to be part of the subterfuge. It was especially valuable to Ashley because he told me he had been snubbed by the local honour-givers before. Your face either fits or it doesn’t with some folk.
So here’s an odd one. A regular dog-walker who the other half bumps into told him that she’d actually been shouted at in a field for NOT letting her dog off the lead. ‘You’re ruining him’ he accused her of. Even though she knows that if she did let the dog loose, he’d run off at best. Sensible dog owners, if you come across such a person, do ignore and walk on.
If Mat Crisp resigned from his position as Lib-Dem councillor with immediate effect, then it was the longest ‘immediate effect’ I’ve ever seen. My sympathies are reserved for the people who are now out of a job because their boss reaped the profits and didn’t have the decency to pay the rent he owed to a council who were pushed to their limit. It’s their mental health we should be more worried about.
