It’s almost that time of year when theatres are packed with excited children, parents and grandparents eager to participate in the magical, unique world of pantomime.

When the lights go down, the music strikes up and the curtains part to reveal a brightly-lit village square or Widow Twankey’s Laundry, the company on stage go into their upbeat opening number and for the next couple of hours, frantic fun and frolics will fend off the big bad world outside.

Pantomimes feature larger than life, often eccentric, characters in over-the-top costumes and hilarious wigs, who bicker, swap insults and behave like overgrown, slightly dim, kids.  Yes. It does sound very similar to the Welsh Assembly.

Pantomimes are designed to cheer people up during the Christmas/New Year period and brighten the dark winter months.

The revenue collected from a pantomime can keep a theatre going for several months, subsidising more ‘arty’ productions that attract smaller audiences.
So . . .  who could possibly say a bad word about pantomime?

Step forward Tru Powell, a Birmingham ‘social commentator’ who stated on breakfast TV that ‘Pantomimes need trigger warnings so audiences can make informed decisions as to whether they want to put them in a space where they can’t control their emotions. They need to prepare themselves mentally”.  For a pantomime?

Has he never been to a theatre or a cinema?

Audiences don’t want to control their emotions.  They’ve paid to laugh, cry, gasp and sometimes scream.  He made his comments after Cambridge University’s Amateur Dramatic Society warned their panto “Rapunzel” contained scenes of ‘Kidnapping, sexism and alcohol abuse!’  Panto?

That sounds more like one of those psychological ‘thrillers’ that turn up on ITV every week.

What Cambridge students put in their shows for their audiences is a million light years away from professional pantomimes which may contain the odd double entendre that goes over the head of the little ones while tickling grown-up funny bones – but they’re not deliberately offensive.

All people require to make an informed decision is to look at the posters outside the theatre – and, if the show looks entertaining, they’ll buy tickets.
They don’t need to be guided by a po-faced social commentator.

Every week I get a chance to share a bit of me with you, which at times can be both challenging and colourful.  Yet it’s a privilege for me in so many ways.

Having said that, occasionally this newspaper editor does pull me up on a few things.  And there was me thinking that freedom of speech was now in abundance in these modern times. (Just joking, Mr Editor!)

So, why do we read the newspapers when we are bombarded with news items from one source or another 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

Well, maybe your reasoning is different to mine, but research suggests that we are addicted to gossip and negative news.

Could this be the reason that the majority of the population can’t keep secrets?

This has certainly made me think about my back catalogue of stories, which on the whole are true – despite the slight exaggerated bits for comedic effect.
I’m sure you understand.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you – as I love the fact that as part of my job people share events and stories with me.  Long may it continue.

If you’re not yet 60, if you eat your greens and take long walks, one day, with any luck, you might be!

If you are over 60 and own a semi-detached house, according to housing minister Chris Pincher you’re ‘rattling around in it’ and should sell up and move into a one-bedroom property, because you’re a ‘barrier’ preventing a young family moving into the home you worked all your life to pay for.

I bet when you sometimes struggled to pay the monthly mortgage and the mortgage protection premiums, you never imagined a government minister would, with cold indifference, refer to you not as a hardworking, diligent citizen, but a ‘barrier’.

The following are his words – not mine.

“38% of properties are currently under-occupied, too big for the people rattling around in them. There’s an opportunity to encourage downsizing and the later living sector*, which will free up two & three bedroom semis”.

*The later living sector are small properties specifically for older people that he’s encouraging developers to build more of.

Let’s be honest. Not all older people want to be surrounded by other old people or live somewhere that’s a third of the size of their previous home.
I don’t know what’s more ridiculous – that ‘Penny’ Pincher has no idea what goes on outside the Westminster Bubble or his full title is ‘Minister of Housing, Communities and Levelling Up’!

Presumably when he was made a minister, along with his portfolio he was handed a spirit level.

In the real world, many three-bedroom semis only have two decent sized bedrooms plus a tiny box room.

Hardly a vast mansion to ‘rattle around in’.

As he’s also Communities Minister, ‘Penny’ Pincher should know that more than 100.000 marriages break down every year, forcing many sons and daughters to move back into the parental home, often bringing their own children with them.

If their parents have downsized to a one-bedroom flat, I’d be interested to know how ‘Penny’ Pincher plans to solve the potentially huge problem of where their children and grandchildren can seek alternative refuge after a marriage breakdown.

I’m going to keep my eye on Mr Pincher.

I think we all should.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m a big supporter of please and thank you; it costs nothing to be polite and to appreciate an act of kindness.

Far too often I witness such acts being totally ignored – and it happened again only last week.  I saw a young boy hold a door open for a middle-aged lady in a busy Swansea shop and was shocked to see that this gesture was totally ignored.

Fair play to him, he didn’t react – and went on with his day (not many of us would have reacted in such a laid-back way, I don’t think).

I’d understand if this had happened in a big city like London, where the pace is much faster and people less friendly, or is it that we are so preoccupied in our own little worlds that we don’t even notice when other people are being polite and courteous anymore?

We can all make an effort to acknowledge an act of kindness from a fellow human being; there is no excuse.

Making small regular gestures of kindness and appreciating people around you should become a habit and is something we can all work on, I’m sure.

London is the most important city in the UK without doubt.  There! I’ve said it.
And in so doing, annoyed some ‘Dai-Hards’ with a grudge against ‘The English’ – although every night they’ll happily watch TV soaps, dramas and game shows mostly produced in…guess where?

London is home to Number 10 Downing Street – an address everyone in the English-speaking world knows –  palaces, museums & art galleries; the BBC’s HQ; Pinewood/Shepperton film studios; first-class theatre that attracts visitors from all around the world (and Llanelli) and the financial area known as The City.

Don’t send me letters. I haven’t finished yet!

While where you live is important to you, the ridiculously brief, breathlessly hurried local news opt-outs on Good Morning Britain reveal ITV doesn’t give two hoots about anywhere more than 25 miles beyond Piccadilly Circus.
I’ve covered this subject before, but having watched GMB again recently, it’s one worth returning to.

Between 6.00 a.m. and 8.55 (ITV screen five minutes of adverts between the end of GMB and the start of ‘Lorraine’ which is why their final interviews are always so rushed) there are local news opt-outs at 6.10. 7.10 and 8.10.

Invariably these opt-outs are delayed because even though Piers Morgan – who hardly ate because he was so full of himself – has left, the current presenters waffle on and on well past opt-out time.

And when they finally take a breath and say “Here’s the news, travel and weather where you are”, in under a minute we get three short news stories and a 15-second ad for the company ‘sponsoring ‘ a 10-second weather report usually recorded the night before.

It’s so perfunctory, so insulting to the regions, I wonder why ITV bother.
I reckon they could squeeze in an extra news item if, instead of the presenter wasting airtime saying “I’m Andrew Jones. The GMB headlines now in Wales”, it’s written on a caption at the bottom of the screen.

And can anyone tell me what Andrew does between GMB and his lunchtime bulletin?

Does he have a coal round or own a newsagents and tobacconists?
Go on. Ask around…where you live!

I don’t know about you but over the past couple of days I’ve had some trouble warming up.

At this rate, I will be digging out the thermal underwear garments which have been hidden away up until now following my last winter holiday. Before Covid I might add.

On Saturday evening, I couldn’t help but notice that the majority of the punters frequenting Wind Street in Swansea were wearing next to nothing.

Yes – bare legs and flimsy tops and certainly no fur coats.
And the women were just as bad!

Don’t get me wrong, extremely fashion-conscious, but zero practicality.
It’s now dawned on me that I’m at an age where comfort and practicality takes precedent over fashion.

Boring to some, I know, but I’d rather be warm and happy than cold and miserable.  Please don’t say that I’m alone on this?

For the record, it must have been cold last weekend.  As I passed my local councillor, I observed he had his hands in his own pockets.  Just sayin’ . . .

*With apologies to Raymond Chandler

Have you ever stopped to consider that during the course of any one week, you’ll probably interact with dozens of individuals you don’t know personally, but nevertheless have dealings that need an exchange of words, even the odd pleasantry, however brief?

I’d be very surprised if you had stopped to consider such an oddball question, because you should know by now that it’s my job to concern myself with oddball questions so that you don’t have to.

So, let me list just some of the people outside our circle of friends and family who we might speak to in the next seven days.

Shop assistants, car cleaners, traffic wardens, barbers and lady’s hairdressers, pub landlords & staff, doctors & dentist’s receptionists, postmen & women, waiters & waitresses, supermarket check-out staff, newsagents, delivery drivers…the end is listless!

Having established that we’ll probably converse with, at a guess, at least 30 people between now and this time next week, how would you like them to address you?

Anyone who works in an environment where they deal with the public should be aware some older people are sensitive about how they’re addressed.

‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ is fine.
‘Luv’ or ‘Darling’ acceptable.
‘Sweetheart’ a complete no-no.

A friend of mine, who jokingly claims “I went prematurely grey at the age of 65”, reckons he only began feeling old when shop assistants started calling him “My lovely”.

When it happened again last week at a branch of a well-known High Street store, he’d had enough and decided to make a stand for all the grey and white-haired people in the world!

After he’d paid for his books and newspapers, (Aha! You’ve guessed what shop it was!), he politely said through his mask to the young lady assistant who’d called him ‘My Lovely’ three times, “I hope you don’t mind me saying that many of us find being called “My Lovely’ very patronising, especially as I’m not particularly lovely myself.

“So, if you could remember that next time you serve an older person, it would be…”
. . . and without thinking, he suddenly found himself saying… “Lovely”!

While writing this week’s column, I felt a strong urge to mention Remembrance Sunday, an event that has meaning for so many and is held in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth as a day to commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and other conflicts.

I have only recently discovered the significance of the poppy, which to my surprise was inspired by the World War One poem ‘In Flanders Fields’.

I read that the opening lines refer to the many poppies that were the first flowers to grow in the churned-up earth of soldiers’ graves in Flanders, a region of Europe that overlies a part of Belgium.

This is truly a day to remember and one we should never forget.

So many have contributed and paid the ultimate price so that we have choice and freedom of speech, enabling me to share my views openly (subject to the editor’s approval, of course!).