I've been sat-nagged

Sat-nagging. What's that, I hear you ask. Well, until last week, I didn't know what it was either but now I do. It's when the voice of a sat-nav system (in this case, bizarrely, the voice was that of John Cleese) nags you all the way to your destination.

Fortunately for me, I'm used to being nagged while I drive. Melissa has many qualities, but patience while I'm driving is not one of them. Our journeys together are punctuated by comments such as "Wow, we really did go round that corner" or, "What's the matter with you today? You're all over the road".

Anyway, back to the sat-nagging. A colleague kindly lent me his portable sat-nav to find my way to a building in the centre of Birmingham. It worked perfectly. However, being constantly reminded by Mr Cleese that I had to go straight on in 200 metres was a little distracting.

By the time I arrived home, I had the thing on mute. Even John Cleese isn't funny when you've heard him repeat the same joke about French people making us say metres instead of miles 500 times.

What's happened to summer?

Like most people, I'm thoroughly miserable about our weather we've been subjected to over the last couple of weeks.

It's cost me important cricket matches, prevented me from sitting outside my local and enjoying a pint and, worst of all, has stopped me spending time in my beloved veggie patch while the weeds multiply at a terrifying rate.

However, the wet weather has also thrown up one unexpected bonus - I'm not jealous of my colleagues taking holidays in July and August.

As with most businesses, there's always a rush to book holidays during the summer holidays with the place resembling the Mary Celeste at times as a result. Normally, this makes me grumpy because I tend to take my holidays at other times.

This year, though, the bad weather means I don't feel I'm missing out - sitting in an office all day when it's pouring down is much easier than sitting in an office all day when it's glorious sunshine outside.

I've got a week off at the end of September. Hopefully, the weather will be fantastic and all of my colleagues will hate me.

Talking rubbish

I like to think that I'm a fairly reasonable sort of person but, occasionally, things make me really angry.

And this week, bin collections have been making me angry.

Now I'm not going to claim for one minute that I'm the world's most conscientious when it comes to recycling. However, I am doing my best to recycle as much as possible and that includes garden waste.

We've got a fairly big lawn and our two garden waste bins get filled up quite quickly, particularly during the summer months. So you can imagine my delight when I realised that, due to a reorganisation of bin collections across the county, Wrexham Council decided there would be a four week delay in collecting garden waste.

As I write this, both of my green bins are full - and I still have two weeks to wait before they are emptied. My grass needs cutting, and I may have to resort to using the household waste bin.

I can understand that Wrexham Council wanted to reorganise bin collections to cut costs, but surely they could have come up with a better solution than this. Maybe the middle of winter, when nobody is cutting their lawns, would have been more sensible.

To add insult to injury, Chirk has just lost its very popular skip, which was previously available to residents on a Wednesday and Saturday. I know local councillors opposed the move but were told the skip had to go to save money.

Instead, any waste which we cannot fit in our bins will have to be disposed of at Plas Madoc - six or seven miles away - and all those car journeys can't be good for the environment.

Another podcast

I'm featuring in the latest Leader podcast, which is now live at http://www.eveningleader.co.uk/podcasts/PODCAST-Evening-Leader-podcast-010808.4350525.jp

Have a listen and let me know what you'd like to hear on it in future.

Summer arrives...

Summer has actually arrived, although for how long is anyone's guess. The weekend was glorious, and I managed to spend plenty of time outside (mainly, trimming the hedge for what seems like the twentieth time this year).

Warm weather also encourages drinking. There are few more pleasant experiences than sitting outside pub, beer in hand, watching the world go by. Somehow, the beer tastes nicer. In fact, it's one of the main reasons I like to go abroad on holiday; even though the beer served abroad is invariably lager, I still manage to drink and enjoy it. In Britain, I'd rather have a nice cup of tea than a pint of lager.

But when the fine weather arrives in this country, it's even better. On Thursday, I was able to sit outside my local, The Bridge Inn (or The Trap to those in the know), and enjoy a couple of pints of Timothy Taylor Landlord - a fine pint of ale - with my dad. We sat on the terrace outside the pub, enjoying spectacular views of the aqueduct and viaduct, drinking beer and eating pork scratchings. And what could be better than that?

Home grown produce

As regular readers may have noticed, I'm quite proud of my vegetable garden. This week, I've been particularly proud.

The reason? Well, the other night we enjoyed a chilli that featured my home grown chillis, tomatoes, courgettes and green peppers.

I can assure you that it tasted better because so many of the ingredients came from the bottom of my garden rather than the bottom of a supermarket trolley.

Another week, another podcast

Despite the fact that I'm obviously not cut out for a career as a radio presenter, the Evening Leader's digital editor, Christian 'The Dude' Dunn, has invited me back for another podcast.

If you'd like to find out what we've been up to at the Leader over the last week, click here:

http://www.eveningleader.co.uk/podcasts/PODCAST-The-Evening-Leader39s-podcast.4285693.jp