Search Cheshire Communities

  • Looking for a service or community in Cheshire, search our extensive guide below

Save money off your water bill with Cheshire Communities

Grab my RSS feed | (What's this?)

About this site

Interested in joining Cheshire Communities? Click here to find out how

This is your community website, and the content will be driven by you.
If you find any offensive or insulting material on this site please report it to the administrators or phone 01244 606 409

Advice for users - click here to find out how to get the most out of your website.

The views carried on this site are not necessarily shared by the Cheshire Newspaper Titiles, or its parent company Trinity Mirror.

Keywords

Recent Articles

Recent Comments

Feeds

Monthly Archives



Personally Speaking

Police are getting a grip

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on May 15, 2008 8:19 AM

FROM The Daily Telegraph, May 6: A disabled war widow who has refused to pay her council tax for two years has fled abroad to escape arrest.

So it’s come to this, has it?
Inspector Gripper of the Yard looked up in scarlet faced fury when his sergeant jabbed him stiletto style with the bad news.

“She’s flown chief. Done a runner. Scarpered. Gaff’s empty. No trace. Searched. No passport. Spain’s favourite.”

Continue reading "Police are getting a grip"

Signs of artistic ambitions in highways department

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on May 8, 2008 1:46 PM

THIS country has developed a serious problem to go with all the others. This one borders on obsessional.

We cannot resist tinkering with our roads, adding this, putting in that. Usually, it is in the name of safety, but sometimes I do wonder.

Our relationship with roadways seems to be one of gardens and gardeners.

Continue reading "Signs of artistic ambitions in highways department"

Industry gets into bed with university

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on April 22, 2008 12:17 PM

ONE of the country’s newest universities is offering a degree in selling beds. The Britain we live in, eh?

It is what would have been called a training course in your day.
Now it comes with a cap and gown and two years’ obligatory student drunken revelry.
But for being born in the wrong era I would have enrolled myself and happily moved into the halls of residence. Not only would I have bedded the pretty little blonde-haired girl down the corridor I’d have sold her the mattress as well.

Continue reading "Industry gets into bed with university"

Is trip on spaceship truly out of this world?

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on April 17, 2008 1:58 PM

WEIGHING up what to do for my hols, I was torn between a rainy week in a caravan in Abergele – it always rains in Abergele – and joining the first civilian space flight on Virgin Galactic’s spaceship Two Feather. They are now taking bookings, you know.

Abergele stands on a direct route for the rain clouds from Snowdonia. All the while, it is sunny in Llandudno. You can see it sort of shimmering in the distance.
But the cheap caravans are in Abergele, or Towyn if you are the fun-loving sort. If there’s a caravan site, there is always a shop and social club nearby, so there’s no end of things you can do if it is raining.

Continue reading "Is trip on spaceship truly out of this world?"

Mon Dieu! Classroom pranks turned Fat Malc into a thug

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on April 8, 2008 8:34 AM

Teachers are being worn out by classes who hum in unison or start orchestrated coughing and other schoolboy pranks, says the union NASUWT.

Humming? Coughing? They should be so lucky. We drove our French teacher mad. Of course we did not mean to, not so he’d spend months off work and return from some psychiatrist’s couch a thug with the manner of a kindly uncle, but we did.

All teachers are supposed to have ways of dealing with mischievous classes. I remember a physics teacher who could lift me off the ground by the ear lobes. Mine, not his.
Others just had authority. You played your joke and then did as you were told.
Whenever Fat Malc, the French teacher, turned to write on the board we’d swap places, so when he turned back, no one was where they were supposed to be.
Ha ha.

Continue reading "Mon Dieu! Classroom pranks turned Fat Malc into a thug"

Real Cheshire folk know their true boundaries despite lines on a map

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on April 1, 2008 11:08 AM

LET me tell you something about Cheshire.
It starts at Hoylake in the west and ends at Stalybridge in the east.
Even though Wirral and anything the other side of Bowdon has not been in Cheshire since the last time they mucked about with the boundaries, the folk who live there still see themselves as Cheshire people.
Certainly those whose families who can trace their residential antecedence right the way back through the mists of time to, oh, 1974 and beyond.

Continue reading "Real Cheshire folk know their true boundaries despite lines on a map"

Brush over Basil’s gaffe

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on March 25, 2008 1:02 PM

IS Basil Brush racist? His joke about a Gypsy nicking his wallet is a slur on all travellers, says a Gypsy and Travellers Network and stereotypes them.

Personally, I suspect it’s a class thing. Mr Brush is extremely well spoken, dresses very well and doesn’t throw litter about, just the kind of person to get up a Traveller’s nose.

Continue reading "Brush over Basil’s gaffe"

British humour is a funny thing for others to follow

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on March 19, 2008 8:29 AM

Three interesting reports reach my ears: The secret of British humour is in the genes, say researchers; Britons are only happy when miserable, says an American – and Germany to buy ’Allo ’Allo.

The last item is bound to make us happy. Constable Crabtree, speaking broken French in English and dubbed in German, will be worth watching with subtitles. I think we should buy it back.

Continue reading "British humour is a funny thing for others to follow"

Personally speaking

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on March 11, 2008 10:15 AM

IT’S all very well for the Government and the Daily Mail and the Greens to pick on the plastic shopping bag, but my question is this: When they are banned, as will happen, what are we expected to wrap Sunday’s chicken carcass in?

You know, the one that sits in the wheely bin for two weeks in the summer getting smellier and smellier, until it is potent enough to knock out the binman like coal gas and a canary.
It’s a serious question.

Continue reading "Personally speaking"

Personally Speaking

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on March 4, 2008 12:53 PM

You cannot take early flowers and sunshine as evidence of Armageddon

Spring is early again. I know because the newspapers tell me and because, well, I saw two ducks, you know, at it, the other day.
It may be nature but it is not romantic. It’s a wonder she didn’t drown.

Other ducks were milling about as ducks do and you wonder what they thought of it all.
Daffodils have been flowering for months, hedges are in bud, the sun is shining, there are gnats in the air and it is all the fault of global warming.

Continue reading "Personally Speaking"

Education system is failing even examination cheats

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on February 26, 2008 9:23 AM

MORE than 4,000 students were caught cheating at A-level and GCSE exams last year. Proof indeed of the dumbing down of education, that so many should try and get caught.

The percentage success rate in my day was far higher, I’m sure. It is bad enough standards seemingly in all subjects should be dropping – the latest example is a teacher who gave his class of 10-years-olds a science GCSE paper to do and a third of them passed, even though they had not yet studied any science - but that the system, despite all its billions, is not producing pupils who can cheat and get away with it is condemnation of the system indeed.

Where is the UK in these Euro league tables they keep trotting out at such times? Bottom I shouldn’t wonder. I bet there are sharper cheats in France. Oh, the shame!

Continue reading "Education system is failing even examination cheats"

Ballet and opera will just put teenagers off culture

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on February 20, 2008 12:05 PM

Schoolchildren will be taken to the opera and theatre under government plans to offer all teenagers at least five hours of culture a week.

This sounds like the first ever case of dumbing up to me.
Culture, teenagers. Culture, teenagers. Culture, teenagers.
Nope. No matter how often you repeat the words, it don’t sound right.

Teenagers are overwhelmed with culture as it is. It comes at them in great electronic waves 24 hours a day.

Continue reading "Ballet and opera will just put teenagers off culture"

This espionage business is a real bugbear with me!

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on February 12, 2008 11:49 AM

SSSSHHH! Don’t tell anyone, but I am sure I’m being bugged and I wouldn’t like the security services to know I know that they know what I know.

There is a clicking noise on the telephone and an unmarked white van parked down the road where no doubt my conversations are being recorded. I am aware of a faint whirring in my front room, which will be a miniature TV camera and microphone so carefully hidden I can’t find it.

Damn clever, these people.

Continue reading "This espionage business is a real bugbear with me!"

Don’t comply with recycling police and you’ll be given six of the best

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on February 5, 2008 10:46 AM

A MATE who attended boarding school once told me weekly canings were the norm. If, by some miracle, you had escaped a whacking, then it was assumed you had got away with something and given six strokes to teach you a lesson.

I went to a grammar school and spent five years on the run.
Occasionally I was caught and hit, thumped, knuckled or pinged on the head with a long-handled chemistry spatula. I was caned often enough to still clench my buttocks instinctively whenever going past the old school.

Continue reading "Don’t comply with recycling police and you’ll be given six of the best"

How green are our windmill forests?

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on January 29, 2008 10:46 AM

A new generation of nuclear power stations to satisfy a great chunk of our energy needs for decades to come are to built and funded by the private sector. Meanwhile, the Government is putting up some windmills.

Seems harmless enough, pitiful almost. It has all renewed the wind v nuclear debate.
Good in theory, windmills, though they offend the obsessive compulsive in everyone.
When you see the little plastic jobs on a stick attached to a child’s buggy whizzing round you do see what the greens see: free, clean energy. Lots of it about and always more on the way. Our wind farmers must be working very hard.

Continue reading "How green are our windmill forests?"

Money going down black hole

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on January 22, 2008 10:49 AM

When your Government can launch a £25 billion rescue plan for a bank and then nationalise or ‘subsidise’ it for £50 billion give or take and no one seems to bat an eyelid, you know there’s too much money in the country.

The 2012 Olympic Games is going to cost £10 billion, three times more than they reckoned. Yeah, but who cares? A black hole of £1 billion has already opened up, apparently. A billion? Sorry I even mentioned it.

Billions go on Government computer systems that don’t work but, hey, who’s counting? Like a drunken tinker we just roll off a few more tens. Yet at the same time we are cutting back on scientific research. A measly £80 million, but the effects are profound.

Continue reading "Money going down black hole"

Health check's dark side

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on January 15, 2008 9:45 AM

FROM a stationary position, I moved smoothly from the surgery waiting room, negotiated the obstacle of his door without losing momentum as if I had got anti-lock brakes and halted before his desk.

“I have come for my MOT health check,” I announced. “Parp, parp.”

He said I had been the fifth person to say that to him today and he asked me if I smoked. I said no thanks, but he could go ahead and he said he’d not heard that one before and rolled his eyes.

For £2,000 a week, you should get a better class for sarcasm from doctors.
But Gordon Brown’s free MOT health check sounded just the ticket so I persevered.
“Any complaints?” he asked.
“Big end,” I answered, keeping the gag running.
“The check-up is for serious illnesses, not piles.”
“Actually, it’s not piles, it’s the itches. You know the type you get in Woolworths or church or somewhere and it’s excruciating, but you…”
“I don’t want to know. This is all about heart disease, strokes, diabetes and kidney disease. We are trying to cut the hospital admissions and save the NHS millions.”
“So you want me to pull up my trousers?”

Continue reading "Health check's dark side"

No more love malarkey

Posted by Trinity Mirror Cheshire on January 8, 2008 1:24 PM

FOLLOWING a Labour think tank suggestion to scrap Christmas to avoid offending members of other faiths, this column ca