REFLECTIONS welcomes the new year with 10 resolutions...that Middleton Road’s crazy cross-roads get sorted; the A5 dualling gets approval; a tram to Gobowen is confirmed; Pant and Llanymynech bypass gets the green light; on-off births - unexpectedly returned to our maternity unit yesterday - stay ‘on’; two cinemas are up and running later this year; Cross Street remains pedestrianised during the daytime; the A5 viaduct over the River Ceiriog is repaired...at last; the Ironworks planning mess gets sorted, but under strict conditions; and finally, let’s hope Oswestry wins its BID status, so we all prosper in one of the friendliest towns in Shropshire.

AND speaking of ‘Middleton Road’ users, there hope at last for ‘far end’ residents, facing a daily grind with its ‘bottleneck’ junction.

A ‘critical project’ in the council’ Place Plan envisages long-term a new link road from it’s junction with Aston Way to Shrewsbury Road. It would skirt the space set-aside for 600 homes by Oswestry’s Leisure Centre.

Meanwhile please, Highways England, find it in your heart to dig out an old set of traffic lights for this long ignored junction, for all ‘nearby’ residents.

WASN’T it a tad foolhardy, before the year was out, for a hot air balloon to hover just three feet above the mere at Ellesmere?

Not only would it and its burners scare the wits out of our wildlife, but dipping in the water risked waterlogging the basket and dousing the flame - as well as kissing its occupants goodbye!

A WELCOME new ‘Lonely Tree’ could soon be watching over Llanfyllin, following 17 potential ‘replacements’ being planted by volunteers to replace the one that keeled over.

Mayor Cllr David Goodman watched over sapling plantings slap next to the fallen tree. It’s hoped at least one will take root and people will be picnicking beneath its branches in maybe a couple of decades.

I HOPE there are sufficient volunteer magistrates in Bristol or Bath - as that seems to be the way justice is moving round here - after talks that our current ‘local one’ at Telford faces closure.

Justice would then move lock, stock and barrel to Kidderminster - when will these crazy cutbacks cease?

A TREFONEN reader praises the dozens of rural guys like David Lloyd from Trefonen who go out all night snow ploughing and gritting in addition to their normal workloads?

One old farmer from the top of the village asked this ‘snow plough man’ whether anyone ever said thank you. ‘No’, he replied, ‘but two did complain’!

FINALLY three wishes...Let’s hope the prosecco festival planned for Brynkinallt Hall in Chirk on May 19 won’t have its attendance depleted by Harry and Meghan’s wedding - or by competition from the FA Cup; let’s hope Oswestrians Peter Starbuck and his wife Heather escaped unharmed after picking Cambodia and Vietnam to spend Christmas - just as the Philippine’s ‘Typhoon Tembin’ struck; and let’s hope after Network Rail replaces old canopies at Shrewsbury Station, it then focuses on the rotting ones at often neglected Gobowen!