Here we go again

I have found myself going through a mixture of emotions during the past week due to various news headlines.

On Thursday there was some light relief and I burst out laughing when I heard that there was a move to “Revitalise Bognor” and my reaction was to say “here we go again!”.

This is a subject which has come up regularly and never really gets off the ground. Anyone who has read Gerrard Young’s excellent book on the history of Bognor will know that this topic has arisen roughly about once every decade for the past 200 years but never gets anywhere.

In the past, people donated sums of money for the purpose and then had to have it all refunded when the project failed to happen. Probably the only time any real changes were made was back in the 1960s (I think) when the council pulled down all the attractive Victorian buildings near the seafront and replaced them with ugly brick facades, if anything at all.

And then, of course, the wonderful sandy beach of our youth was covered with mountains of shingle to protect the sea wall.

This was followed by a feeling of anger on reading that, in order to make a

Covis testing station in the Northgate car park (previously known as the

Sloe Fair Field), Chichester Council has decided to cancel Sloe Fair! Which they have no right to do as it has an ancient Royal Charter which will be lost if the showmen fail to hold the event in any year. So I trust that there will be a token stall or two as happened during WW11 to ensure the survival of this ancient attraction. But what annoys me is that the testing station is, apparently, not going to occupy the entire car park and vehicles will still be allowed to park there whereas when it is taken over by the fair, quite rightly, no other parking is allowed for two days.

And speaking of car parking, I was incensed to find that with the dwindling footfall in Chichester shops and cafés due to the pandemic, the council has increased parking charges in the central car parks to £2 per hour, that is for each and every hour or part thereof.

So, if one needs to go into the town to pay a cheque or cash into the bank, it costs £2 for the privilege and with the inevitable queue outside it takes almost an hour. For that reason I tend to do all of my banking and shopping in Bognor, so I will look forward to the revitalisation thereof. KEN STRUDWICK Shopwyke Road

Chichester