JUST as I was hauling out my old Olympia Splendid, the now out-dated but, hopefully, still trusty, portable typewriter, to try to gather a few thoughts together for yet another column, I was interrupted by the phone bell.

Again, as so often, it was from a double-glazing firm's representative.

And again, she received curt dismissal.

I am led to speculating whether, at some distant point in time, it will ever dawn on this - and other firms - that I am not interested.

You would think, would you not, that sooner or later one of them would look at the list of calls going back several years and suggest to a superior that there appears to be a waste of money and time and that it might be a good thing if my name (and no doubt a great many others) were deleted.

It's Sunday afternoon. The weather has relented, brought out the sun, taken the edge off the wind and pushed the temperature up to the near-seventies.

Just think. That caller could have been out on the garden, as I was this morning, or taking a walk along wherever the Wye is still visible.

What a challenge the garden presents. Grass too many inches high, shrubs going berserk, weeds abounding. Is there, I muse, something in common with the persistence of unwanted vegetation and the efforts of phone callers trying to sell me something I know I don't require?

All part of life's pattern? Regrettably, I'm afraid so. But then, I have a chance, if only temporarily, to make the garden look better. I have no chance, it seems, against the phone sales pests.

IF you had been, as I was, in the High Street of High Wycombe on Friday, you would have found a contrasting scene of activity and non-activity.

Most of the market stalls, it seemed, were back in their old places and there were plenty of people around.

The workmen repaving the road, for good or ill depending on your point of view, were busily stirring up dust.

But a number of businesses, banks, building societies and shops were at a standstill. Staff were outside their premises to explain to irate members of the public that, somehow or other, power lines had been cut off. Accidentally, it appeared.

I was wending my way along to the offices of Wycombe District Council because I wanted - no, amend that, - because I was required to pay my household tax. There, too, in Queen Victoria Road, the staff was doing its best at tables just inside sliding doors that wouldn't slide, to conduct business.

They were perhaps luckier than the High Street businesses which had the unenviable task of trying to persuade would-be customers to go further afield to some outlying branches.

HOW disturbing to read that car drivers were put in danger by canisters having been hung over bridges and that rail traffic is being put in jeopardy by morons placing heavy objects on some lines. And isn't it a little odd to read of an official suggesting that the culprits should be made to realise that this goes beyond a prank and that they should be told that they are putting lives at risk?

Are we really to believe that youngsters are so thick that they do not know that what they are doing is wrong?

If they ever get to court will the wagging finger of a magistrate have any real effect?

Corporal punishment should be promoted to sergeant and the too-liberal minded reduced to the ranks!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.