Straight talks

TO bring back my blog - which I will be updating much more regularly now after a two month hiatus - I've decided to put up three of the "Straight talks" which we are now encouraged to write. Two (moderately) humorous, one more serious...

I’LL tell you exactly what I’m doing at the moment you read this.
I’m on a £6 a night campsite in the Cotswolds, wrestling to insert a plastic pipe into a fabric hole that defies geometry, while cows chew nearby with that languid look on their faces which suggests they really aren’t impressed.
And I’m enjoying it. You would think that growing up on a campsite near Holbeach St Johns would imbue a love of tents, but it took me until my mid -20s to appreciate them. Before then I couldn’t understand why people would come all the way from Sheffield, or Lanarkshire, or even Croatia once, to stay on a little scratty patch of grass, and share their ablutions with overweight fisherman in a communal washroom before returning to the flap of canvas that they pretended was a home, as it waved wildy from a gale blowing across the Holland Drain.
The answer, of course, is obvious. Camping is fun. Turning up in a field in nowheresville is remarkably liberating and sudden energy reserves you didn’t realise existed are tapped.
You are physically putting up your barrier against the elements, but at the same time you’re becoming a part of it, constructing your own little den in the earth while the stars and beasts watch.
And tea tastes better brewed in an aluminium kettle with dried milk in a cracked cup. There’s no real scientific evidence for it, it’s just a proven fact.
Last year I walked part of Hadrian’s Wall, and on the first night I stayed in my single tent while Northumberland’s rain did its best to destroy me.
The next morning I went to the owner’s farmhouse to be greeted by a warm friendly face with a warm friendly bacon roll. Campsite 1, rain 0.
I suggest everyone has a go at putting up a tent once in their life. You don’t need to travel far. I’m not naming names but I can think of several campsites around Spalding where you could enjoy a weekend.
Maybe you could practise in your garden - you might just love it. That’s why I’m stood in this field, probably without vital tools such as a mallet, pegs or cooler box - but having a lot of fun.


THE plans for the Red Lion Street Project in Spalding, soon to be examined by South Holland District Council’s planning committee, look absolutely amazing.
But hidden among the promise of jobs, food experiences and business opportunities lurks a piece of news which filled me with even more joy than a juicy pork pie.
It’s a small but very important piece of news for anyone with a profound disability: The site will have the town’s first Changing Places toilet.
The Changing Places campaign aims to install public toilets across the country with equipment including height-adjustable changing benches, a tracking hoist system, and adequate space for the disabled person and up to two carers.
Around 40,000 people with profound and multiple disabilities, and their families and carers, need Changing Places toilets nationwide as they cannot use existing “normal” facilities.
There are also thousands more who may have suffered strokes, acquired head injuries, or are simply old and frail.
Without these facilities even simple trips out to the shops become potentially embarrassing or impossible for them but the campaign is gaining ground, with the 100th UK Changing Places facility recently opening in Sheffield.
Spalding is currently bereft of these facilities but their inclusion was obviously something Red Lion Street chiefs were proud of when they unveiled the plans at a public consultation meeting. Boston College marketing manager Mark Emmerson brought it up early in our conversation, and he was delighted that local campaigners’ concerns had been addressed.
My brother Christopher, who had Downs Syndrome, died shortly before his third birthday.
Had he lived he would have suffered greatly on outdoor excursions from a lack of facilities, as the signs were already clear that his mobility would have been severely comprimised.
Because of Christopher’s condition my late father and I moved into the caring profession and met hundreds more people who simply could not be taken out for any great length of time because of the lack of facilities.
So I am particularly happy at the news. We cannot expect these toilets at every town and village up and down the country - but Spalding is doing its
bit. For more information on the campaign go to www.changing-places.org.


WHEN I first heard about the idea to turn the much-missed Spalding Woolworths premises into a 90p store I had mixed feelings until I realised:
1)There are too many empty buildings in Spalding, and having something is better than nothing. 2)It could be worse: Primark is rumored to be moving into the Woolies building in Peterborough. Yes, that's PRIMARK. For those of you who missed it the king of chic, cut-price clothing may be lurching its way into Poshland.
I'm not against it in principle, as Primark has an incredible ability to make even the worst looking flotsam and jetsam of society look vaguely attractive.
Indeed, I retain a dainty pair of electric blue and slate grey shorts from a former beach holiday which still look the biz.
But what worries me is that while a £4.99 t-shirt for my girlfriend is £4.99, five t-shirts at that price are knocking on the door of £25.
Knocking very loudly and with threats not to do the house work if I don't buy them, in my experience.
And we all know that anything on offer, even objects that don't really fit properly or look any good, have to be purchased because, well, THEY'RE ON OFFER.
There must surely be a psychological term for the condition that makes seemingly rational creatures walk into a clothes shop to buy a hairbrush and come out with three new tops, four pairs of shoes, a hat, two handbags and a pair of leggings that Jessica Alba was seen throwing in a skip in Heat last week.
Boughtism maybe. Or buy-polar(neck) disorder.
I can still sit in a darkened room and relive my first journey into a Primark in Coventry.
It was a terrible netherworld where vampish assistants looked at me and bored into my brain, wallet and springy cylindrical basket with their greedy eyes.
They looked at me, and my partner, and me again, and relished my pain – the same pain I saw etched across other poor souls being dragged through the store.
So to recap the 90p shop is fine by me, because:
a) It's another business (that looks quite nice inside, by the way) and fills up an ugly gap at the end of town.
b) It isn't Primark, or a clothes shop of any kind, and that means I will not slide into financial oblivion, no matter what my girlfriend spends.
Of course if a gadget shop had moved in you could have ignored everything above...