WELCOME to my first column of the New Year which I hope brings health and prosperity to you all. So what might 2011 bring for Weymouth and Portland?
Well, the council will still be struggling to make ends meet although the new seafront charges for the amount of beach sand people carry away on their feet could help raise a few pounds there.
Recycling in Weymouth will hit new heights with plans to build a 30,000-seater grandstand for the Olympic sailing events using nothing but discarded beer cans and fast food trays retrieved from the harbour.
There is also good news for the remaining town centre businesses since so few are left now that all of them are bound to win a prize in the town’s annual Easter window dressing competition.
All joking aside, I think most people take any talk about “the green shoots of recovery” with a huge pinch of salt, but the picture is not entirely grim.
I expect this year to see the first major influx of revenue from businesses moving in to nail their slice of potential Olympic trade while house sales and rentals will pick up for the same reason since some sailing teams are already here and others are bound to arrive soon not to mention their host of associates and hangers-on.
Major progress will also be made with the relief road and other capital projects, but focus should be retained on Olympic legacy developments since their benefit will be felt long after the event itself is a distant memory.
So be positive, take your chances when they come and talk the borough up as much as possible.
You’ll need your patter off pat for when all those street interviews by foreign media start being
done. Pozegnane!
Is it me?
YOU know you are getting old when one of the world’s greatest cinema stars draws a mystified look from the 30-something person you are talking to.
I was in Weymouth town centre chatting about films with a colleague when I happened to mention Cary Grant.
Getting no response, I said: “Cary Grant, the cinema star.”
The reply I got went: “I think I’ve heard of the name but I’m not sure who she is.”
I nearly throttled him.
Will that new shaver foam make me look like Brad Pitt?
CHRISTMAS and the New Year may be gone but already we face having to learn an avalanche of new words.
I am speaking, of course, about all those cosmetics, skin creams and moisturisers that Santa brought.
He missed me out because I still rely on Brillo to exfoliate, but people close to me got a bewildering array of products all promising to contain major new scientific breakthroughs to ward off everything from old age to dandruff.
Give me a bit of help here. Just what is micaproplus with added wolverine B9?
And will the new shaver foam with labreanin ultraglide really make me look like Brad Pitt? My wife doubts this and so do I, but I’m fascinated.
There must be whole departments in every major company whose sole job is to come up with new words designed to convince shoppers that here is a product advance that they simply must have.
Well, here are two words for them … Not Interested.
Mind the gap - if you value your head
A PENSIONER on board a bus obeyed all the signs urging people to stay seated until the vehicle stopped.
Several passengers had quickly exited the bus but, being a bit unsteady on his feet, the pensioner paused on the top step to check the ground he was stepping down on to.
But as he leaned forward the pneumatic doors closed on his neck like some modern version of a French Revolution guillotine.
His head was in mid-air, the rest of him was still in the bus and it took the yells and shrieks of fellow passengers to alert the driver who quickly released the unhurt captive who had remained remarkably calm throughout the whole awkward situation.
The incident left me wondering how those cutting edge braincells at Health & Safety will react.
Let us hope they don’t decide that doors are a hazard and must be removed, condemning passengers to death by frostbite instead of death by decapitation.
www.viewfrompublishing.co.uk
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