Have you ever been so bored in a cinema or theatre you’ve walked out?
I’ve certainly seen some ‘critically-acclaimed’ films at the multiplex and after 30 minutes decided that some film critics don’t know their art from their elbow and discreetly left the cinema.
As for bad stage productions, I’ve seen plenty, but always waited until the interval before leaving.
Such ‘Theatre Etiquette’ appears to be going out of fashion.
Recently, while performing the dramatic final scene in the play “Inter Alia” at London’s Wyndham’s Theatre, actress Rosamund Pike was distracted by the sight of an audience member texting.
Rather than stop the show and break the tension, she carried on.
But, after the play had ended and she’d taken her final bow, she returned to the stage and gave a speech about the bond of trust between the actors and the audience that makes a play work.
Rosamund referred to the person who’d knowingly broken that bond, but refrained from singling him out and just pointed in his general direction, saying “You know who you are”.
For this she received a massive round of applause.
If you thought that audience member’s behavior was atrocious, consider what happened when Andrew Scott was delivering the “To be . . . or not to be” speech in a London production of Hamlet’ not too long ago.
A man in the audience took out a laptop and calmly started e-mailing, disrespecting the actor on stage and treating his fellow audience members with contempt.
On that occasion the e-mailer received both barrels from the actor.
With the phenomenal price of West End theatre tickets these days, I wonder if this ‘I don’t care if I’m spotted texting or e-mailing’ attitude, that such ignorant people adopt, is some sort of supercilious superiority syndrome?
They’re saying, “I’m so rich, the fact I splashed out £300 on a ticket means nothing to me, so if I want to text or e-mail during the performance I shall!”
When I’m King, I’ll issue a decree that photographs of these idiots are displayed outside every theatre in the land so they’re refused entry . . . for life!

Life seems to move at 100 miles an hour these days.
One minute you’re popping out for a pint of milk, the next you’re stuck behind a tractor doing 20mph on a country lane, wondering if you’’l ever see civilisation again.
Wherever we’re heading, whether it’s a trip into town, a weekend on the coast or simply nipping to the local shop, it’s easy to become wrapped up in our own little world.
But every day gives us the chance to make someone else’s day just a bit brighter.
The good news is you don’t need to win the lottery to do it.
A smile, holding a door open, letting someone pull out into traffic without muttering under your breath, or helping an elderly neighbour with their shopping can all make a real difference.
Even a quick chat with someone on a park bench might be the friendliest conversation they’ve had all day.
There’s an old saying: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”
It may sound like something your grandmother embroidered onto a cushion, but she wasn’t wrong.
The funny thing about kindness is that it’s contagious.
Smile at someone and, more often than not, they’ll smile back.
Before long you’ve started a chain reaction that spreads far further than you ever imagined.
Unlike catching a cold, this is one thing worth passing on.
We never really know what battles people are facing.
The cheerful cashier, the busy delivery driver or the person waiting quietly at the bus stop may all be carrying worries hidden behind a brave face.
A little patience, a kind word or a simple, “How are you?” can mean more than we realise.
So, wherever your travels take you this week, pack a smile alongside your shopping list and your umbrella, because this is Wales, after all.
A little kindness weighs nothing, costs nothing and might just be the best thing you carry all day.

Somebody recently discussing the comedy duo Mike and Bernie Winters said, rather snootily, “They were no Morecambe & Wise”.
That’s unfair, because, as much as I admire Eric and Ernie, they weren’t infallible.
Their first TV series flopped so badly, a critic quipped “Television: The box they buried Morecambe and Wise in”.
Ouch!
The trio of feature films they made in the ’60s didn’t really work, while “Night Train To Murder”, the TV film that formed part of the ITV deal to lure them away from the BBC, is barely remembered,
Brothers Mike and Bernie split-up in 1978 after working together for three decades. They’d fallen out years before and by the end weren’t speaking to each other off stage.
Mike became an agent in Miami and died in 2013, while Bernie teamed-up with Schnorbitz, a huge St. Bernard dog that Bernie called ‘My favourite stage partner’, and enjoyed TV success with “Whose Baby?” and “It’s Bernie!” before playing Bud Flanagan in the TV movie “Bud and Ches” and on stage in the musical “Underneath The Arches”.
Bernie’s long marriage to Siggi could sometimes be volatile and one particular Sunday, after another huge row, Bernie was eating his lunch in the kitchen while Siggi ate hers in the dining room.
When the phone rang, Bernie answered and on the other end was Jimmy Tarbuck calling from the London Palladium.
Roy Orbison, booked to top the bill on that night’s “Live From The Palladium” was indisposed, so Jimmy wondered if Bernie could help fill out the show by doing a short comedy routine with him?
Bernie immediately drove to the theatre without telling Siggi, who was used to him disappearing after an argument.
That evening, following some dressing room rehearsals with Jimmy and his writers, the two comedians did their spot on the ‘live’ broadcast.
Siggi was watching at home, while wondering where Bernie had got to, so was shocked to see her husband walk out on stage and entertain the Palladium audience . . . and 12 million viewers!
What a pro ‘Choo-Chi Face’ Bernie was.
He died, much too young, at 58, in 1991.

If you’ve managed to book a family holiday this summer without taking out a second mortgage, congratulations.
You are either a financial genius, won the lottery, or have discovered a travel website the rest of Britain doesn’t know about.
For everyone else, the annual school holiday getaway has become less of a break and more of an extreme financial endurance event.
Parents still dream of sunshine, sea views and a week without hearing the words, “What’s for tea?” every 20 minutes.
The children, meanwhile, simply want reliable Wi-Fi and a pool big enough to film questionable TikTok dances.
Then, reality arrives!
Flights mysteriously triple in price the moment schools break up, hotels suddenly believe they’re five-star palaces, and a caravan in North Wales starts costing about the same as a small apartment in Monaco.
Travel companies insist it’s all down to ‘high demand’.
Families have another description for it, but it isn’t suitable for publication in a family newspaper.
With household budgets already stretched tighter than an airline seatbelt in economy, many parents are abandoning dreams of the Costa del Sol in favour of the Costa del Shed.
Why spend thousands on a Mediterranean resort when the back garden offers all the essentials?
There’s sunshine, occasionally, a paddling pool that deflates every afternoon, and the neighbour firing up the lawnmower precisely as you sit down with a cold drink. Authentic British holiday ambience.
Older readers may remember when summer holidays meant squeezing the family into a slightly damp caravan in Porthcawl or Barry Island. Luxury meant having a kettle that worked.
The toilet block was somewhere over the horizon, the showers alternated between Arctic and volcanic, and fetching fresh water involved carrying a container roughly the size of a small oil drum across the campsite.
Nobody complained because, frankly, everyone else was doing exactly the same thing.
Children entertained themselves with football, buckets, spades and arguments over whose turn it was to hold the torch during the midnight toilet expedition.
These days, if the holiday accommodation doesn’t have fibre broadband, a hot tub and an air fryer, there’s every chance someone will leave a one-star review entitled ’Worst experience ever’.
Of course, the great irony is that the moments families remember rarely involve expensive resorts.
It’s the burnt burgers on a disposable barbecue, the tent collapsing at 2am, Dad insisting he can assemble camping chairs without instructions, and Mam discovering she’d packed everything except the toothpaste.
Those stories become family legends. Nobody ever reminisces fondly about paying £8 for an airport bottle of water.
So, perhaps this summer, if foreign beaches are beyond the budget, don’t despair.
Fill the paddling pool, fire up the barbecue, chase the wasps away from the sausages and let the children loose with a garden hose.
With a bit of imagination, the back garden can become the Algarve, albeit with more drizzle, fewer palm trees and Dave next door asking if anyone’s seen his hedge trimmer.
At least the journey home won’t involve a delayed flight, lost luggage or a four-hour queue at passport control.
And that’s got to be worth something.

I have to admit that some weeks it’s not easy trying to come up with ideas (and enough words) to fill the allotted space that yours truly is given.
That I always come up with something, often at the 11th hour, and occasionally at one minute to midnight, is due to that old writer’s combination of 10 per cent inspiration and 90 per cent perspiration.
Fortunately, for those in close proximity to me while I’m working, I use a rather effective deodorant every day.
Other weeks, I have so many ideas elbowing their way to get a place in the front row of my thought processes, I don’t know where to start.
And then there are weeks like this when I feel the need to elaborate upon and ruminate a little more on a subject I wrote about a while back but didn’t have enough space.
So here’s some further thoughts on that most British of institutions . . . the Bank Holiday.
How many have we had this year already? Ten, at least.
With High Street banks closing all over the UK ‘because everyone banks online’ (I’m sure my nose just grew by two inches as I wrote that!), I don’t understand the need for Bank Holidays.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I assume they were created to give pressurised bank staff a few extra days off during the year. But, like thousands of unfortunate bank employees, they’re redundant in 2026.
If so many banks have permanently closed their doors, then the pressure is off bank staff who’ve entered new professions or taken early retirement and for whom every day is a Bank Holiday.
If we still want those extra days off so we can drive to a seaside resort we can’t get into because 20,000 other drivers had the same idea, they should reflect the new businesses that have taken over from banks in town centres.
The term ‘Bank’ Holidays should be replaced with something more honest.
I submit, for your approval, the following suggestions . . .
Cash For Gold Holidays
Turkish Barber Holidays
Vape Shop Holidays
And my personal favourite…
Coffee Shop Holidays!

Well, here we are again. Somehow another year has slipped by, and today happens to be my birthday.
It seems they come around quicker every year, although I’m convinced someone keeps shortening the months!
I’d also like to send a big Happy Birthday to everyone else celebrating today.
Imagine all of us scattered across Wales and beyond, sharing the same birthday without even knowing one another. I hope you’re all having a wonderful day and finding at least one reason to smile.
I’ve never understood people who say they don’t bother with birthdays anymore. Why not?
Every birthday is another milestone, another chapter, another reminder that we’ve laughed, learned, muddled through and made memories along the way. That’s something worth recognising, whether you’re turning 18 or 80.
Birthdays aren’t really about presents or making a fuss. They’re about taking a moment to appreciate life, the people who make it special, and the privilege of seeing another year arrive. Not everyone gets that opportunity, so I think it’s something we should never take for granted.
Of course, there will always be someone who insists they’re “not counting anymore.” That’s perfectly fine, but I suspect they’re still pleased when someone remembers to wish them a Happy Birthday. We all like to feel remembered.
And, before I go, here’s a little birthday truth that has never failed to make me smile: the people who have the most birthdays live the longest!
You can’t argue with facts like that!
So celebrate your birthdays, however quietly or loudly you choose, and never apologise for doing so. They’re meant to be enjoyed, and long may they continue.

I’d heard the expression before, but not grasped its meaning.
Then, last week, it was explained to me, albeit accidentally, while I was in one of my favourite environments, a coffee shop.
As I was sitting at my table, cwtshing my extra-skinny, ultra-healthy latte, and munching on my bacon and egg panini with extra butter, two well-dressed men, aged (I would guess) in their early 30s, parked their rears at an adjacent table.
I paid little attention to their conversation at first (who said, “That’s not like you, Phil!”?) as I was engrossed in one of the free newspapers the coffee shop supplies to customers to read while cradling a cappuccino or musing over a macchiato.
That might sound generous of Reg the proprietor, but they’re never that day’s newspapers. In fact, they’re usually a week old. I think he gets them from the chip shop next door.
Anyway, my engrossment was curtailed when I heard one of the men at the adjacent table (remember them?), using the expression I’ve been talking about. Which is . . . “Duvet Day”.
One chap had asked the other what he was doing the following Monday and his friend said, “Oh, I’m having a Duvet Day!”
Fortunately for me, and those of you for whom the expression is only vaguely familiar, his pal was puzzled and asked him to explain.
Well, you could have blown me down with a feather (if that’s your idea of a good time) when he said, “It means I won’t go into work, will probably stay in bed until lunchtime and won’t lose any pay. It’s a ‘thing’ these days!”
What?
As Frankie Howerd put it, “Never has my flabber been so gasted!”
With unemployment so high, particularly among those aged 16 to 24, it’s now a ‘thing’ to take a day off when you feel like it, stay in bed and expect to get paid for it?
Call me old-fashioned, but shouldn’t the glib expression ‘Duvet Day’ be renamed, using the word it replaced, to the much more honest ‘Skivers Day’?
Another bacon and egg panini, please, Reg!

I spent a glorious weekend down in west Wales, where the weather had apparently mistaken Pembrokeshire for the Mediterranean.
The beaches were packed tighter than a rugby clubhouse on Six Nations day, with families, paddleboarders, inflatable flamingos and enough Factor 50 to waterproof the entire coastline.
Everyone seemed determined to charge into the sea as if it was a giant heated swimming pool.
Unfortunately, the Irish Sea hadn’t received the memo.
While enjoying an ice cream that melted faster than a politician’s promise, I overheard an elderly couple discussing Britain’s most underrated trickster, the tide.
“People don’t realise how quickly it sneaks up on them,” the gentleman said.
“One minute you’re collecting shells, the next you’re starring in your own rescue drama.”
His wife nodded knowingly. “Hundreds get caught out every year. The tide doesn’t send a warning text.”
They had a point.
Every year, visitors underestimate tidal times and strong currents, with tragic consequences. The sea is beautiful, but it doesn’t negotiate.
The conversation then drifted onto another worrying subject: swimming.
The couple lamented how many local leisure centres with swimming pools have disappeared over the past decade.
Those that remain often charge prices that make you wonder whether you’re paying for swimming lessons or a Caribbean cruise.
When I was a young lad, learning to swim was almost a rite of passage.
Today, far too many youngsters never get the chance to become confident swimmers.
That’s not just unfortunate, it’s dangerous.
So, while the Welsh sunshine continues pretending it’s the Costa del Sol, perhaps we should remember that our coastline still plays by British rules. Check the tide times. Respect the currents. Learn to swim if you can.
After all, the only thing that should be swept away this summer is your stress, not you.

I’m not au fait with the latest trends, or too many French phrases, come to that, but I’ve noticed in the last few years, something very annoying has happened to TV rolling news channels.
And I don’t just mean there’s far too many of them.
Add newspapers like this esteemed publication; online news; and hourly news bulletins on every radio station and we’ve never been so well informed.
I have a dim memory that when I was a lad, the news at six or 10 pm might, on very rare occasions, be interrupted by a ‘News Flash’ containing something really important.
But rolling news channels are so obsessed with ‘Breaking News’ they break it over our heads far too often.
Presenters could be in the middle of an in-depth, interesting interview with a celebrity or chatting to a politician and a person of dubious character (you’ll have to make up your own jokes in regard to that last sentence, otherwise I could be censured by sensitive Senedd censors*), then, suddenly, one of the presenters will say, “I’ll have to stop you there, because we have some breaking news!”
Forgive me for pointing out something I may have pointed out in one of the hundreds of articles I’ve written over the last decade, but I reckon seven out of 10 ‘Breaking News’ stories are not so urgent they couldn’t wait a couple of minutes until the current interview or news story has been wound up.
It can only be a matter of time until a Breaking News story is interrupted by more “Breaking News”.
* I completely understand why some of our 96 (at the last count) Welsh Senedd Members could be so sensitive to scrutiny and, assuming they’re able to understand it . . . satirical humour.
Being a MS. can be a perilous occupation. You are constantly in the public eye and if you’re foolish enough to put a foot wrong, career-wise it could be “Goodnight Vienna!”
In other words, one day you could be in the Senedd debating ‘Big Issues’ and the next day you could be on the street selling them.

The Great Welsh Heatwave of 2025
Well, who ordered all this then?
After spending eight months complaining that it was wetter than a mermaid’s washing line, Wales has finally been treated to a proper dose of sunshine. And how have we responded? By complaining. Typical.
It only took a couple of days nudging 27°C before the nation collectively declared, “I can’t cope with this.”
Suddenly everyone’s an expert on heat exhaustion, the dog’s lying flat out like an old rug, and Dai down the road is insisting he could fry an egg on the bonnet of his Fiesta. Mind you, he probably gave it a go.
Only a few weeks back we were peering through rain-streaked windows muttering, “It’s always sunny in Spain.”
Now we’re standing in the garden saying, “I’d give anything for a bit of drizzle.”
You couldn’t make us up.
The supermarkets have sold out of fans, paddling pools and ice lollies, while every Welsh Mam is marching around the house shouting, “Shut that door! I’m not paying to cool the whole of Carmarthenshire!”
Meanwhile, every Dad in Wales has dusted off the barbecue at the first glimpse of blue sky.
Never mind that it’s 30 degrees and everyone’s melting into the patio furniture, those sausages aren’t going to burn themselves.
Well, actually, they probably will.
And then there’s the great Welsh wardrobe dilemma. We spend all year waiting to wear shorts, only to discover our legs haven’t seen daylight since the Rugby World Cup. There’s enough Factor 50 being slapped on pale knees to keep the chemists in business until Christmas.
Sleep? Forget it.
Bedrooms have turned into saunas, duvets have been banished to the spare room, and half the country is lying spreadeagled on top of the bed wondering if opening another window will let in a breeze, or just another moth the size of a sparrow.
The best bit? We all know exactly how this ends.
By a week Tuesday it’ll be chucking it down again.
The flip-flops will be back in the cupboard, the barbecue will return to the shed after exactly one successful outing, and we’ll be back on Facebook posting, “Summer? That was nice while it lasted.”
Then, just to complete the annual Welsh tradition, we’ll spend the rest of July looking up cheap flights to the Algarve while standing in a queue at B&Q wearing a waterproof.
So, until the heavens inevitably open again, keep drinking plenty of water, check on your neighbours, and if it all gets too much, do what generations of Welsh people have always done . . .
Put the kettle on and have a good moan about it.
After all, sunshine comes and goes.
A proper Welsh complaint is forever.