SOME of you may have noticed the hanging baskets around the town recently; others may not have spotted them, which is understandable if you have your eyes down looking in shop windows.

In any event, the overall effect is very pleasing and several 'corners' of the town look quite attractive. At its last meeting at the end of June, Malton Town Council discussed the subject of the donation, or should I say YOUR donation, to the maintenance and watering of these baskets and added £500 to help with the expenses.

The total budget expenses for 2001 amounts to - wait for it - £8,000! Nothing comes cheap these days. 150 baskets cost £2,025, with an additional item below this of £1,100 for 'new baskets and containers'. Then we have 'watering' at £3,240, following this another item of 'plants and watering' of £650, and another of 'additional watering' £720. Maintenance of plants and insurance, telephone and postage puts another £330 on the bill, and there we have it. Income appears to cover this, with just about everyone chipping in, so it looks as though we are assured of a good display again this season. Do take a look upwards next time you're out to see the amount of effort which has been put in, whether or not you understand the budget!

A report by the committee of the Rail Action North Yorkshire (RANY) makes interesting reading, with lots of interesting statistics in support of the reinstatement of the Pickering to Rillington Junction line, a distance of 6 miles, and likely to cost £19m. Despite what happened when Beeching tore the track up, there are people aware that disused transport routes must be safeguarded, and the dream to go back to rail lives on. It must come, for it seems logical if we are to reduce petrol and carbon fuel emissions, road accidents and the endless encroachment of roads across our countryside. It needs a great change in attitude, in almost everyone's mind, to use the train instead of the independence of one's own car, but I expect it will happen. This last 6 miles would complete the 56 miles trip from York to Whitby by rail, and would open up this part of the north-east coast to the rest of the country once again. In with this development is the re-opening of stations at Haxby, Strensall and York Hospital. What a boon that latter one would be for visitors who each day try to find somewhere to park at this busiest of centres. Some figures arrived at from this survey for the year 2000 give the North York's Moors National Park having had 9.75m visitor days, NY Moors Railway 272,089 visitors and Flamingo Land 1.275m visitors. Rail users' journeys have increased yearly since 1995 and at 1997/8 stood at 695m with an estimated 50pc increase by 2010. At the same time, car usage has shown a 27pc increase in the ten years to 1997, and the trend continues. Folk will just not stay still, will they!

I had recently commented that I was 'doing some distempering', and an old friend stopped me in the street telling me that I was out of date. Mr Wood, who lastly operated Woods Painters and Decorators at Norton, 'spotted' this one and, yes, I should have said I'd been doing some 'emulsioning'. Old habits die hard as far as word usage is concerned, added to which 'distempering' is a far easier word to say than emulsioning. I wonder if anyone else uses this word - it kind of has the same niche as using the word 'hoovering' instead of 'vacuuming'. Anything to do with the generation gap I wonder? Does the young generation use such words? I shall have to take note.

I had a friend from Gloucestershire who came over at the weekend to collect some old cycling literature I'd saved for him, and when he rang me prior to this, I suggested I'd better let him have details of where I live. "Not necessary," says he. "I just punched your postcode into my computer and it gives me a map of exactly where you are." When he arrived, he showed me four sheets of A4 showing my house with a ring round it, another map showing Norton and Malton, another of smaller scale showing how the roads fit into the national network, and a very large-scale map with Malton in the middle and all the villages shown around which, from a prospective traveller's point of view, is fantastic. Wondering at the facilities available today and to other possible uses/misuses, I find it a bit frightening.

In a monthly newsletter I receive there is a one-liner which says: "In England, there are only six villages without a war memorial". Now I find this a bit hard to believe, but wouldn't dare to question our dear editor. Has anyone any ideas on this one? Could this be correct?

Just a thought: "To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all". (Helen Rowland, US journalist. 1875-1950).

Updated: 11:58 Thursday, July 12, 2001