WHISPERING SMITH Why go anywhere else?

You can’t tell me one moment I am overweight and then let me loose like some old dog fox in a chicken run!

Well, a couple of weeks ago I was there at the Fontwell Food Festival, so I thought I had best make the most of it before the farmer got his gun!

You cannot hold down, deter, dissuade or dismay the great British public when they are set on having a good time.

Wind, rain or floods – we rise above it all. Fontwell was awash with people, sheeting rain flooding the already saturated grass, straw spread to help soak up the water, wellies on and umbrellas up and the visitors young and old, kept on a’smiling and eating.

One didn’t really need to buy a meal, just nibbling on the offered samples was filling enough, although I did finish the day off with a kangaroo burger. Then two cups of coffee in the St Wilfrid’s Hospice tent listening to a lady named Dawn singing old standards and favourites from rock ‘n’ roll to the blues, standing there singing into an old-fashioned mike, swinging along in her red dress with a paper rose in her sixties-styled hair before finally giving in to the rain god who just deafeningly dumped bucket loads onto the noisy fabric roof. Then into the big marquee for an lesson in cooking with humour from top chef Jean-Christophe Novelli.

All in all a fun day, shoes ruined, cholesterol up and waistband extended, I am become one with the planet eaters…

Where have all the vegetables gone, short time passing With reference to my comments on allotments, I am delighted and inspired by the fact that someone in the local seat of power actually reads my column, both inspired and encouraged, actually!

Councillor Roy Scrivener’s comments? Well, about what I would have expected really.

I guess making the plot rental so expensive as to drive keen gardeners away is one answer to any problem with them, but it’s hardly the best one.

Similarly, if he is aware of wrongdoing he should report it as fact, so that the officers concerned can investigate.

I have always found councillor Alan Gammon to be both helpful and sympathetic where the allotments are concerned and although his attempt to explain the difference between cuts and savings will raise a wry smile or two, I still find him so.

My slow worm tells me he paid a site visit last week with clipboard-carrying officer in tow and while there quietly solved one longstanding problem. As Mr Punch would say, “That’s the way to do it!”.

It’s summertime and the living is easy… Last weekend, LA was as it should be and as I remember it as a child… Sun, sea, sand, smiling children and sunburned people. Why go anywhere else?