Daily Mail reporters ought to read this before writing future stories about Abingdon. For the rest of us it is just a reference.

The Daily Mail has accused Abingdon of being apathetic about its soldiers homecoming.

Yesterday, troops back from their tour of duty in Afghanistan marched to a church service in St Helen’s church at 11 a.m.

I have had to borrow the picture from the Daily Mail web site as I was at work.

They needed something to illustrate what some high up military was saying about the apathy of the general population towards the army serving abroad. These pictures fitted the journalistic brief but they do not fit my knowledge of Abingdon.

Every year we get a similar letter:

Dear Sir/Madam

…We are aware that the Fair does cause inconvenience to residents. We thankyou in anticipation of you co-operation.

The rides have started arriving. here is one pictured near the Drayton Road Bridge, with the caravans and trailers of fairground people behind.

Abingdon has green river valleys stretching to the town centre.

cleaner red buses with the slogan ‘come up for air’

The Abits (Abingdon Integrated Transport Strategy) plan involved holding traffic outside the town centre, and letting it through in a controlled way so that exhaust fumes did not forever pollute the town centre streets. Here at lunchtime, traffic is moving through fairly well, in batches. But later on, at going home time, there was one continuous line of idling traffic along High Street. West St Helen Street was even worse with stationary traffic right back to the church until 7:30 PM.

So come up here for the air, but you’ll have to judge whether its safe to inhale..