Yes I couldn't believe my ears when a smiling Prime Minister pledged on the eve of coming local elections that his party would repair all the potholes. Yes you heard that correctly. Not some of the potholes but all of the potholes.
Now during our recent holiday we travelled a handful of roads in Shropshire and a few there and back and they were absolutely littered with potholes. I have never known things this bad. We hit or avoided hundreds if not thousands. But fear not, they are all going to be repaired. Somehow I think not.
Driving now means you not only have to keep an eye on the road conditions and the behaviour of other drivers but you have to look out for holes in the road and sometimes swerve to avoid them.
If I didn't know better I would have thought this party political broadcast was an April Fools joke. And that takes me to my next point. You all know how much I love social media. I use it every day but on April 1st this year it was difficult to decide whether posts on Facebook were fake news, April Fool pranks or true news.
Some April Fools were simply ridiculous like sightings of a 90 year old Elvis Presley. Others were more believable and a couple could have conceivably been true. One in particular would have been great.
It was a suggestion that the four sons of Beatles were forming a band. This wasn't that ridiculous because Sean Lennon, James McCartney, Danhi Harrison and Zak Starkey are all musicians in their own right. Oh how I wish this could be true. Mind you it would probably be a let down as you would expect too much from them.
You may have noticed that I didn't do a spoof blog for April Fools as all my entries have a high stupidity rating.
So where to now? Well a tale of our last day's holiday and a tale of two churches. Yesterday I said we were going to Worcester for a short visit but we woke up to drizzle and so decided not to make the detour and instead to go to Bridgnorth which was vaguely on our route home. That's Bridgnorth and not Bridgenorth, although there was a bridge and it did lead north.
I'm a happy bunny if I can find a car park with spaces. I absolutely hate the find the space game. Thankfully Bridgnorth had two large car parks just a couple of minutes walk from the centre and there were heaps of spaces.
At first I didn't think much of Bridgnorth but it was one of those places that grew on us, particularly as the weather improved. There was an upper town which was up and a lower town which was down. And when we were up we were up and when we were down we were down and when we were half way up we were neither up nor down (sorry).
We brunched at a very historic Bishop's House tea rooms and walked and walked and walked, down and up steps, along terraces and round some quaint areas. There were two churches. The first was holding a service so we didn't go in but the second was what was known as a redundant church ie no longer used for worship.
I have seen some redundant churches in my life. There are quite a few in Norwich. They often end up as cafes or antique shops or just deteriorate. Then there's St Lawrence in Bridgnorth which is in an area that reminded me of Norwich Cathedral Close. Apparently there used to be a school there and I could easily envisage booted and suited youngsters being educated there.
This church had the smell of a building newly polished as indeed it had been. It was pristine, gleaming and sparkling. It had a book sale, a bric a brac sale. Above all it was difficult to grasp that such a magnificent building is not used as a church. We got talking to one of the volunteers that look after the building which is in the care of the Church Conservation Trust.
We set off for home and were delighted that our journey took just over three and a half hours and we were back in plenty of time to have tea and then go to our parish church for the induction of Hethersett's new rector and I will tell you all about that in tomorrow's blog as it was a very uplifting service with a sermon that was as unexpected as it was appreciated.
I hope you enjoy today's photographs. Many of them are of Bridgnorth but there are also a load from our visit to Powys Castle on Tuesday.