COMING in to work a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d done irreparable damage to my car when I drove over a viciously-deep pothole.

I say drove over the pothole, it felt more like I’d driven into it – not so much a pothole, more a crater.

And the really frustrating thing from my point of view is, given where this particular pothole was, it was completely and utterly unavoidable.

I watched all the cars in front of me hit the hole and like a lemming, so did I.

It was so bad, I contemplated changing my route into work to avoid it.

But on my way home that evening, I noticed whoever is responsible for fixing these things had been out during the day, done their stuff and left us, the long-suffering motorists, with a nice, smooth road.

Now I don’t claim to be an expert at highway maintenance – truth be told I’m not really an expert about anything – but as a road user, I would have hoped the repair would have lasted longer than a month.

But it appears not.

The hole is back and you still can’t avoid it.

It’s not as big and it’s not as vicious as it was but I think it’s only a matter of time before it’s back to its crater-like worst.

Let’s just hope whoever fixes these things responds just as promptly as last time and gets it right this time.

(Just for the record, this particular pothole is at the junction of Crosfield Street, Parker Street, Liverpool Road and Sankey Street and is catching unwary drivers turning right to go down Parker Street as they come over Bank Quay bridge.)

  • When I was a small boy, there were certain illnesses that were talked of only in hushed terms.

It was generally old people who held them in fear and awe because they were old enough to remember when these illnesses were either fatal or life-changing and not in a good way.

I’m not talking here about ‘exotic’ diseases such as smallpox, cholera or typhoid.

Those I have in mind are illnesses such as measles, polio, diphtheria and scarlet fever.

We have come a long way since I was a boy but the news of an outbreak of scarlet fever at a primary school in Warrington sent my mind racing back to the time when I was about four or five years old.

I will never forget the look of terror on my grandmother’s face when I came home from school and informed the household that the boy who sat next to me at St Bede’s Infants School had scarlet fever.

My gran was certainly old enough to remember the turn of the century when scarlet fever killed around a quarter of those who caught it and memories like those just don’t go away.

Apparently, a small number of pupils have been affected by the current outbreak in Warrington according to a letter which was sent out to parents last week. A council spokesman has confirmed the authority has been liaising with Public Health England following the diagnosis.

Only one school in Warrington has confirmed to the council that is has been affected so far but across the country there has been an unprecedented rise of the disease, with the highest rate of infection for nearly 50 years.

There is currently no vaccine for scarlet fever but happily these days, prompt treatment with antibiotics is an effective treatment.

  •  I see work is carrying on at a fair old pace on the new Time Square scheme.

The scaffolding holding up the facade of the old Boots building is a feat of engineering in its own right and the demolition teams seem to be working overtime on clearing the site of the old market.

This whole project looks like it could have the potential to transform the town centre and we can only hope that when it is complete, Warrington will have a family-friendly evening economy that is welcoming for families and not just teenage drinkers.