Last week the circus came to town, and it gave me & Chris the biggest belly laughs since we watched Grimsby at Vue. Our shared sense of particular brand of humour was one of the first things we found that we had in common, and probably explains why we both remained single for so long before we met each other. The circus rocked up in Collett Park amidst the usual outrage on the Facebook Community Page – why on earth should the circus be allowed in our beautiful park when there

Collett Park has to be the jewel in Shepton Mallet’s crown, and the annual Collett Festival fits in perfectly with this. The sun shone brightly and warmly this year, so much so that the bar almost ran dry by the evening. The event offered something for everyone, with displays from the Air Cadets, Shepton Mallet Gymnasts, Majorettes, and Chapel Dance Studio; Terry Webb offered up some football skills, and there was music throughout the day from the Wells City Band and Ant Noel

As you may have gathered by now, I’m a real animal lover. My family have always had cats, dogs or both, and I grew up with them. We never had smaller animals, but when I was in my late teens my older sister looked after a hamster for a work colleague that was on holiday, and we kind of adopted him. The hamster was called Blueberry because his coat had a kind of blueish tinge, but he very soon became ‘Hammy’. Hamsters don’t live very long, and when Hammy died my Dad sent me of