September's mist and mud...

We live in a wonderful part of the world. Magnificent scenery, great weather, delightful people, lovely towns and villages and clean air. Waxing lyrical is not the usual timbre of this blog, but the current September weather hiatus has evoked an almost nostalgic feel to the air. That, coupled with the photos of the Eirias boating lake on the Llandudno Local forum, combine to make you think.

It can’t be denied that many folk move to this part of the world precisely because of the above; they leave hectic, competitive lives in the big cities and arrive here, in search of a more laid-back, gentle existence, free from pressure, fear of crime and time constraints. But to create the very environment most of us like, many things have to mesh perfectly. And that includes people.

Have you ever wondered just how many people it takes to create and maintain the ambience Conwy county enjoys? From the environmental services crew, who caringly tend the flower arrangements in the towns’ streets, carefully planting, nurturing, watering and removing, so they don’t get sunburnt, to the cutting of the grass on the busiest roundabout in the area - Black Cat - where they gently and lovingly close off a lane leading from Glan Conwy at 0830, so the cars and drivers can have time - often almost an hour - to fully appreciate the true beauty of grass cutting in the morning.

Visitors are not neglected, either. The warmth and generosity of spirit with which the guardians of our streets reluctantly but sadly apply that plastic-bagged invocation to contribute to the county’s meagre funds, stretched perilously thin through tightly controlled expenditure on such vital necessities as re-tarmacing every good road in sight, whilst ensuring that the vital single track roads to villages continue to rejoice in that quaint tradition of the pothole and the overhanging hedge is nothing short of an homage to real olde world values.

Residents enjoy the most thorough and painstaking deliberation of their planning applications, clearly designed to safeguard our heritage, and the Conwy officers excel at their little japes, pretending to have mislaid vital information, or forgetting to notify public bodies about proposed changes to listed buildings, thus infusing every contact with our councils with unalloyed joy and delight.

What a place, eh?