D-Day focus will be on Trump when it should be on heroes– Zella Compton

Yet again Donald Trump is dividing our nation, in particular our area. I’m peeved about his visit as I really enjoyed the 70th commemorations of D-Day on Southsea Common.
The 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations on Southsea Common with a parade from the Armed Forces reservists. 

Picture: (141633-8921)The 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations on Southsea Common with a parade from the Armed Forces reservists. 

Picture: (141633-8921)
The 70th anniversary D-Day commemorations on Southsea Common with a parade from the Armed Forces reservists. Picture: (141633-8921)

There was a great atmosphere but this is now going to be a very different event.

It’s already pulling people apart when we should be coming together to commemorate the bravery of all those involved in the D-Day landings. It doesn’t matter that he’s elected, or seemingly the most powerful man in the world. His presence causes so much consternation which will overshadow everything else.

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I shall be attending events like Southwick Village and Stokes Bay instead.

Our trips to the west country never end well

Exmoor is only a few hours drive away. That’s the time you spend sitting on the sofa after work, maybe having a few beers, definitely watching some tosh on the telly.

But if you pack up and go, there you are, ready for a terrific weekend in moorland beauty.

Maybe there’ll be a few traffic jams, maybe a delay by tractor, but theoretically speaking it’s all fine. Except it never is as the return journey invariably sucks.

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I can’t remember one which wasn’t fraught with peril. Like the time the entire motorway shut down – with me on it – for four hours as a pedestrian threatened to commit suicide from a bridge.

This time some idiot decided to let down two of our party’s car tires in the depths of the night so when we got ready to leave the next day we were presented with two flats, which meant two changes, and two immensely long traffic jams as we limped along looking for somewhere that was open on a Sunday to fix them, and with availability to do the deed.

The cars were parked on a private lane on the way to the property we had rented for the weekend. They’d been left there after a late might incident involving a broken down campervan, an errant bull and a sliding Landrover.

It was chaotic, but the cars were carefully tucked out of the way before we walked the mile in the pitch darkness to the house.

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I’m guessing that it wasn’t the bull, as even though that was cheerfully gambolling around the vehicles as we waited for the campervan to make a move one way or the other, it disappeared speedily into the inky darkness as we started our walk, en masse, huddled together for protection from its inquisitive nature.

I imagine some numpties drove onto the land, and decided to have a laugh with the tires. Just one flat apiece. Oh, and breaking a car aerial and making a great big dent in the side.

I want to call it mindless vandalism, but it isn’t. It’s very deliberate vandalism perpetrated by an idiot whose punishment should be being condemned to driving east from the west country every Sunday afternoon for eternity.

A thorough dissection helped with confusing Avengers plot

I went to watch Avengers Endgame with my long-suffering children who let me tag along as I pay for the tickets.

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As ever, it was a joy to watch a lot of the action sequences and laugh at the low-key moments.

But so much of the plot is lost on me and my husband as invariably we sleep through many parts of many films, specifically those involving dull Captain America.

Watching a cast of hundreds, nay thousands, of Avengers making in-jokes about relationships and past events meant the whole plot had to be dissected afterwards to make sense.

But never mind that, it was great fun and apparently very meaningful to true Avengers’ geeks.

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