Future High Street Fund

HOW thrilling that Oswestry’s in the frame to receive huge government funding from the Future High Streets Fund. Just our town and Shrewsbury in Shropshire have been selected for grants that could top £10million.

Mayor of Oswestry, Councillor Sandy Best, warns us not to spend what we haven’t yet got, but it’s inevitable we’ll start speculating how best to perk up the town with this wagon full of cash.

First of all, decaying Cross Street shops desperately need transforming to make them irresistible to prospective tenants. Then the eyesore of the missing window, removed by the last tenant of Lawrence’s former Church Street shop, could be popped back in along with our multitude of currently dull passageways being brightened up before our eyes.

Most important, wherever you are in town, cast your eyes upwards to the soul destroying upper floors emptiness – just waiting to become town houses.

No ordinary farmer

I HAD dinner with a farmer last week – but no ordinary farmer.

He was Ifor Humphreys, whose 50-strong herd just beyond Welshpool are rare and famous Japanese Wagyu cattle; a meat that boasts a distinctive flavour, but Ifor enhances even that, by feeding his beasts four pints of Monty’s fine ale from Montgomery!

Top hotels are queuing up for his niche beef with all sales and the butchering dealt with by Alternative Meats near Whitchurch, which delivers throughout the UK.

This is Ifor’s idea of ‘diversifying’ – on his own land – with his other enterprise being the ‘Green Lane Burial Field’ where the departed can spend their celestial years alongside the River Severn!

A warm welcome

THERE’S big praise for Dykes DIY store in Oswestry and Stans Supermarket in St Martins for both still flourishing as independent family-owned businesses.

It comes from Reflections’ reader Mick Ward who’s 85 next month.

Mick has lived midway from both for the past 30 years, admiring the way they’ve “grown and grown”. “There is a continuing warmth when I visit Dykes and ask for some obscure item,” he explained. “I have no doubt both will carry on, long after I have gone.”

It’s a surefire winner

OSWESTRY fire and rescue teams could do you a huge favour, by collecting a dead car from you – for no charge.

They are seeking kind persons willing to donate their scrap cars to help them with their traffic accident techniques, which include stabilisation and casualty extrication. It’s a win win offer - where you get rid of your lifeless car which they can practise on.

And finally...

STUDY these fascinating square-mile population densities, that puts England right at the top of the pile: 1,106 England;1,079 Netherlands; 969 Belgium; 601 Germany; 521 Italy; 390 Wales; 344 Northern Ireland; 319 Poland; 271 France; 190 Republic of Ireland; 180 Scotland and 57 Sweden.