When I started driving, free air was available at our local garage, and if a young lady needed help, the attendant would happily leave his pay booth. Then later ‘free air’ cost 50p or via a token purchased from the garage. Today my local petrol station, with its 8 electric charging points and a gadget to boost your mobile, now only accepts contactless credit card payments for free air. That’s progress.

Thames Water proposes to deal with future droughts by ‘abstracting’ 150 million litres of water a day straight out of the Thames and replacing it with ‘treated effluent’. The Environment Agency unsurprisingly told Thames Water that it “needs to think again” and how start about fixing the 630 million litres of water it leaks a day before it starts taking precious water out of the Thames.

How many takeaways do you need? Like many others, our high street, built in the 1930s, is transmogrifying rapidly.

When we arrived here there were greengrocers, butchers, a fishmonger, hardware shops, Sainsbury’s, Woolworths, and yes we even had four banks.

So for context (and to save you the trouble) I’ve counted the current retail outlets we now have here:

Two tech shops, one pub, a bookie, a plumber’s supplier, a dry cleaner, a florist, a card shop, a key cutter and a solicitor. Business must be brisk for funeral directors as we have two, probably due to the local diet, plus two dentists.

What we excel in are hairdressers and takeaways, you are spoiled for choice should you need a haircut, a tan or a nail bar with 11 to choose from.

But it is ready-to-eat food where we triumph. Should you wish to walk down our high street shovelling food into your mouth, and ensuring the packaging is disposed of by carefully dropping it on the pavement, we have 24 outlets.

You can always identify someone from around here, they’re fat, but immaculately groomed.

New research from Transport for London has shown that the Tube has the most expensive fares of any metro in the world, and that was before the 5.9 per cent fare rise that kicked in recently. Also it was reported that Tube and bus fares will probably go up by an average of 4 per cent next year.

Reports in the press claim that the Met is ‘planning to spend £440,000 on mounting certificates and picture frames’ to maintain morale by recognising officers’ ‘bravery in the line of duty, innovative instigations, long service, and for those retiring’. Very worthy I’m sure, but in my day a poster from Athena of a tennis player scratching her bum only cost 50p. Mind you her outfit later sold for £15,000.