WHISPERING SMITH: Let’s hope this isn’t a false trail

SO, now we have the hint of a promise that the Windmill Cinema is not a dead duck after all and that Adam Cunard, of Bognor, may yet save the day.

I have a question: the maybe saviour is a member of Arun District Council and my question is this – why has it taken him so long to come forward and only now, seemingly, at the behest of town and Arun councilman Mike Northeast?

Surely the good councillor Cunard, as a member of the ADC, has been aware of the problem for the past nine months, if not even longer.

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While I have a genuine high regard for independent councillors, I hope that this is not yet another drag trail 
laid by the ADC, in collusion with Inspire, to keep we, the LA hounds, at bay, while the foxy council goes right ahead and plunders our chicken coop!

MANY years ago, I promised my daughter that I would take her along to a farm lambing.

Well, 20-odd years later, I fulfilled that promise and a couple of weekends ago, when a Sunday afternoon hinted at spring, I took her along to Gaston Farm in Slindon for just such an event.

Like her, I too sat on a hay bale with a bundle of lamb on my lap and, when she asked me, she being a vegetarian, if I could still eat such a lovely little animal, I replied yes, I could, but definitely not that particular one!

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Later, we went into the lambing barn and watched as the young shepherd delivered of a ewe three soggy lambs and I confess to shedding a tear at that precious moment of birth, which seemed to echo the promise of spring in that warm Sunday air.

I am becoming a bit of a softie, I fear.

So, a long-ago promise was fulfilled and I honestly am not sure who enjoyed the afternoon the most.

Spring really seemed to spring that Sunday and on the drive home along the Arundel Road, leading to Lyminster, we were blessed with rooks dancing and flirting on the light breeze among the tall, bare trees noisily squabbling over who should rule the roost in the highest of the nesting sites.

All a bit premature, really, as the cold and the frost and a bitter easterly wind returned and the following day our lovely beaches and the Promenade were once again deserted.