I attended a speed awareness course in Swindon today.

I'd like to say this was entirely of my own volition as a contribution to road safety but the honest truth is I was caught speeding (36mph in a 30mph zone) and offered the chance to go to it instead of adding three points to my collection.

It was with some sense of trepidation I drove to the Hilton in Swindon. My daughter's boyfriend had told me horror stories of shame-faced speeders being tormented with pictures of car wrecks and confronted by disabled victims of boy racers' recklessness for three hours.

Nothing could have been further from the truth. The course was hosted by Andy and Alastair, two friendly driving instructors who are hired by the Road Safety Camera Partnership.

What surprised me most was my fellow course members, I had expected to be coralled in with a gaggle of male sales reps but seven of them were women and of those seven, five must have been in their fifties.

One of the ladies, a delightful soul from Wroughton, had received her speeding ticket just before her 80th birthday, much to the amusement of her family.

Another had been taunted by her husband, who had repeatedly downloaded the speed camera picture of her breaking the law from the safety camera partnership's web site. How cruel is that?

There was something quite surreal about sitting with all these nice ladies, sipping Earl Grey tea and nibbling a shortbread, and discussing our letters of intended prosecution from the chief constable.

I had also expected to be preached at with the consequences of speeding and to be fair there was some of that. We were bonbarded with some questionable and rather simplistic statistics about how each of the 3,500 deaths on the road in the UK in 2005 had cost the taxpayer £1.6 million. Each.

I found this hard to swallow, as was the assertion that excessive speed is to blame for two thirds of accidents. Surely other people doing stupid thing is more accountable?

Equally far-fetched was a discussion about the consequences of speeding. Alastair asked for suggestions, which he scribbled on a flip chart. It began with death and prosecution and quickly progressed to job loss, marital break-up and mental illness as the rest of the group got carried away with doom-laden portents of ill for the miscreant driver.

I was wondering how quickly it would get to pestilence and Third World famine but decided not to suggest them myself for fear Alastair would boot me out and hand my three points back.

What did resonate with me was a discussion about the Highway Code. It quickly emerged that I, having not glanced at a copy since I passed my test in 1986, had no more knowledge of what is in it than I do the Koran.

There have been several revisions since I passed my test and the last one, published last year, alone had 29 new sections added.

It probably bears as much resemblance to the copy I learned from 22 years ago as a PC manual does to a 1986 Olivetti typewriter.

But in that time roads have become umpteen times busier and cars are umpteen times faster and more complex. The only thing that has stayed the same (or maybe even deteriorated) is my brain.

Beforehand I was in two minds whether these courses really work but to educate has to better than purely punishing people.

I had gone in full of self-justification about how my misdemeanour had just been a momentary lapse of concentration and how unfair it all was.

Three hours later I came away with a very real sense that it is my foot on the pedal and the buck stops with me.

It was a slow, careful journey into work afterwards...

Today was a lovely peaceful day in Devizes. The sun peeped through the clouds (occasionally), families strolled along to the May Fair in the Market Place and there was a generally agreeable air about the place.

What a pity the peace was shattered with the ear-batering sound of a samba band.

I know the May Fair organisers don't have a lot of cash and the Oi Sambistas band probably work for little or nothing but is the assault on the senses that is samba music really appropriate for a genteel family occasion?

I was working today and popped over to the Little House of Coffee for lunch. I found a handy table outside and had just settled down to enjoy the warmth of the weather and the adjacent fair when a hideous cacophony started up.

About 20 people began pounding on drums just a few yards away. The air disturbance from all this bashing was so great the coffee cups began dancing on the tables.


Now I am sure there are many, many fans of samba music who love the sultry rythym of the drums.

But to me it sounds like a lorry load of enmpty dustbins being emptied down an aluminium staircase.

I could have up with a few minutes of it and accepted that music is a varied banquet with dishes to suit a wife variety of palettes.

But after 20 minutes it began to wear a bit. It was hard to tell when one 'tune' ended and another began, especially when it all sounded like soemone trying to break out of a container lorry with a sledgehammer.

How do the people who play this stuff not go deaf?

Mericfully it stopped but to my horror the band waited until I got back to my desk and began work again before restarting.

My office faces on to the Market Place and for what seemed like another hour the sambistas were hammering away like a blacksmiths' convention.

Maybe I am just being a miserable, insensitive git. But is this really entertainment?

After a particularly grim meeting in Swindon the other day, which was just a shade less uplifting than an undertakers' convention, I received the perfect antidote when I went to judge the area finals of the Young Enterprise competition.

I went expecting to be faced with teams of precocious swots whose accountant fathers has created them their own spreadsheets but instead I met seven groups of bright, enthusiastic and confident young people.

I swear at least five of them could go straight into business now. They demonstrated more commercial accumen in one little finger than Claire from The Apprentice has her entire body. (And if you've seen her you'll know what I'm saying.)

Each team had to produce a report about how their venture had gone and they made entertaining reading. Some of them made The Apprentice look like Ask The Family.

There were tales of back-biting, arguments, recriminations, walkouts, thefts and last-minute let-downs, in truth just about everything any normal businessman will face in an average week.

I felt sorry for the youngsters from Corsham School who seemed to have completed their task with little support from their teachers. They told me how they had had to sit down with them and explain what Young Enterprise was because they were not being taken seriously.

Fortunately the youngsters did and they came out of it with great credit and represented their school magnificently.

What impressed me was the assurance with which the young tycoons gave presentations about their ventures to an audience of about 70. They spoke with confidence and humour and were mature enough to be brutally honest about theure groups' suuccesses and failures.

When I was their age I hardly had the courage to speak to my parents let alone a room full of strangers,

I'm not sure what really qualified me to be judging their efforts. All I know about business comes from Five Live Money and Dragons Den.

I did my best to grill the the youngsters with perceptive questions during the interview stage but I am pretty sure I came across as a man who does not know what he is talking about. Not for the first time.

The winners were St Augustine's in Trowbridge and the biggest grilling of the night came when one of the teachers from Dauntsey's public school in West Lavington quizzed me rigorously on why her team had come third.

That apart, the whole evening was quite a tonic after the day's events. I wonder if any of those razor-sharp mini-entrepreneurs would fancy my next Swindon meeting instead of me?

The paper has won an adjucation from the Press Complaints Commission.

A family had complained after we published photographs online of an accident in Devizes that showed quite graphically a pensioner being treated in her car.

To be fair the pictures should not have been posted and we took them down pretty quickly after it was drawn to my attention.

The family complained so we published an apology in the Gazette as well as carried a letter from them that made it clear they held the paper in the same regard as a graverobber.

In the paper we had also carried a picture of the accident but made sure the victim's face was not shown.

But the family went to the PCC in an attempt to get the paper censured for even showing a picture of the car, which showed the registration number, on the grounds that it identified the victim and members of their family had not known about the crash.

They also objected to us quoting a policeman who had said it was thought the injuries sustained by the victim in the crash were life threatening.

I can understand they were hurt by the pictures but this was an accident that caused major delays around the town at rush hour, and I mean major delays because hundreds of cars were held up in the jam.

Those people had a right to know what had caused the delay and, after all, this was an accident on a public highway.

My point of view was that most people in the victim's family were unlikely to know the registration number and that the make and colour of the car was more likely to identify the victim. But were we supposed to alter the picture to change the colour of the car and obscure the make?

Fortunately the PCC agreed with us and said that, as we had carried an apology and a letter from the family, there was no case against us.

It is a really difficult area though and I will think a lot more carefully about how we report a similar accident in future.

********************************************************

I was disappointed with Wiltshire Police today. They announced at the end of the week the inquiry office at Chippenham Police Station was to open on Friday.

The civilian front desk staff, who had been made redundant and redeployed, were back behind the counter again.

But the police banned us from talking to or photographing the ladies concerned. Is that because they had been highly critical of the police when they were axed I wonder?

It looked as if the police were trying to keep this U-turn as quiet as possible. They only told us late on Thursday that offices would be re-opening the next day when they must have known for weeks it was happening then.

Anyway, I know plenty of people will be delighted to see the ladies back again, not least all those people I see standing about trying to get someone inside the station to answer the phone on the wall.

It makes me laugh when people warn others not to do things because they then usually go and do the opposite.

Take fuel for instance. The government says "don't panic there is no fuel shortage" and everyone thinks "fuel shortage? There must be something in that" and tears off to the nearest petrol station.

The result? Bigger queues than around a bacon sandwich stall at a weightwatchers fun day.

The only winners are of course the petrol companies and the government.

Where everyone was baulking at paying prices that make vintage champagne look like Tesco own brand orange squash, now they will grateful for every drop they can squeeze into their tanks - even it costs them slightly more than filling up with Chanel No 5.

The government then sits back and collects the thick end of 60 per cent in fuel duty so it can afford to fly Prince William and his chinless mates to more stag dos at our expense.

********************************************************

The Gazette has fallen foul of carvanners it seems.

Colin Rutt, who writes a column in our motoring section, had a little pop at caravan drivers in this week's Gazette.

He mentioned that they should be banned from the roads apart from between 2 and 6am and criticised caravan pullers for clogging up the roads.

One lady rang the office yesterday and said she was reporting us to the Caravan Club. I am not quite sure what sanctions they have over a newspaper but I am worried fleets of them will be waiting to slow me down on the M4 every time I drive to West Ham.

What am I talking about? That happens anyway.

The saying goes that you are only as old as you feel.

Well today I feel like an 83-year-old who has just run upstairs and tripped over his iron lung.

The root cause of this is a weekend in Liverpool for the Grand National on my brother-in-law-to-be's stag weekend.

Aside from his dad, who is a practised imbiber anyway, I was the oldest by about ten years and boy did it show.

I was pleased and touched to have been invited along. It was a bit like asking your nan to join you in a half marathon - you know they are going to hold you back.

Two days of carousing and staying up late left me appearing as if I had just donated eight pints of blood and by the time I arrived home I made Iggy Pop look like a cover model for Men's Health magazine.

I travelled back from Liverpool by rail. It was a tortuous journey, made all the more bizarre by an excuse for a late train that, even by First Great Western's shambolic standards, will take some beating.

I was on the 14.00 from Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington but just as it began moving it ground to a halt again.

"We wish to apologise for the delay in the departure of this train, it is due to a swan on the line," said the guard over the public address, without a trace of irony.

He made it sound as if trains are routinely prevented from chugging off by wayward wildlife.

Three men in Network Rail anoraks walked uncertainly down the platform and a few moments later the train was under way. I'm not sure what they did to the swan, probably threw a few buffet sandwiches at its head and stunned it.

I must say I was impressed with Liverpool. The city is lively, friendly and full of people who love having a good time.

I found myself wandering alone in the city centre, slightly worse for wear, at about 2.30am on Saturday morning. There were about 100 people waiting patiently for a taxi. Most of them had been at the races all day and all had taken a drink.

But there was not a hint of aggression or trouble. People laughed and joked, hugged, shook hands and I had several conversations with young lads who looked like Crimewatch CCTV stills but couldn't have been chummier.

I'm not sure if I could say the same for Chippenham at the same time of day. I'd no sooner be out there alone at the taxi rank than in downtown Fallujah wearing a Stars and Stripes T-shirt.

*********************************************************

IT is always nice to see former Gazette colleagues doing well. I was delighted to hear our former sports editor Stuart White, who now works for the Reading Evening Post, has been given the job of reading out the news headlines on the paper's web site.

Stuart is a good-looking lad who always attracts appreciative glances and there was a period of mourning among the ladies of the advertising department when he left.

He is a talented writer with a great eye for design but his delivery on camera has all the panache of a man who has been shot in the neck with a tranquiliser dart while trying to read a script written on his shoe.

You can see for yourself here. It is an absolute joy to behold.