I WAS so sorry to see that the Parkway had been broken into. Rob Younger must feel he’s being kicked while they’re down there after trying to survive a hard season.

I saw he had posted that one of the perps had bled all over the place (good – that means he got hurt) so I’m hoping that the two men responsible can eventually be dealt with and punished.

In an ideal world, they’d clear up their own mess, pay for all the damage and be given a stiff sentence.

Sadly, the punishment rarely fully recompenses the victims but here’s hoping on this occasion the soft justice system toughens up a bit and it does.

Praise indeed from Ken Senior on the letters page last week. Thank you. But I did wonder why he got his keks in a twist about a previous post I made about capitalism vs socialism.

There are those in the latter brigade who do polarise these two factions into good and evil. To some there are only ‘heroes of the people’ and ‘Elon Musks’ and nowt inbetween which is ridiculous.

Personally I thought I put up a good argument for a balance, but hey ho. Balance is the key to so much in life, a little bit of give and taken, tolerance – something sadly lacking in today’s society.

After Covid one might have thought we would all be more grateful and kind – and pliant, but it seems the opposite has happened.

But yes, Mr Senior hit the nail on the head: you can have strong opinions without being opinionated.

As someone wise once said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

I had a flurry of kind people asking me if I was okay this week seeing as it was mum’s birthday, my son moving out and Mother’s Day all in the same week.

And yes I was fine. But as most people might know it is less likely to be the expected big events in the calendar that hit the hardest, it is the small needles that find their way to pierce the nerves.

I raised a glass to mum with a smile, but finding one of her hair grips broke a dam wall inside me.

I helped my son pack up his suitcases with gusto, but pairing up his socks for the last time fresh from the tumble drier made me howl like a banshee.

And when he came back cadging a lightbulb, he knocked on the front door. Noooo, an upset of world order.

He never has to knock on the door of the house he was brought up in, wrong wrong wrong. Change is so often hard to get one’s head around when you are a creature of too much emotion – an empath, something that allows me to do the job I have, but it isn’t half a double-edged sword sometimes.

We had our gutters cleaned this week because they were starting to look like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

There was more foliage in them than there is in Kew Gardens. We’ve had the local Gutter Vac Guy before and he did an excellent job, hence the repeat custom, but he presented me at the end with a book he’d written ‘The First Boy in Space’ (by P M White) about a young Barnsley lad who – no surprise – ends up in space. I had a dip into it and so far it’s proving to be a very entertaining and well-written quirky read.

Best of luck with it, Paul.