ONCE in a while, amid the e-mails, tweets, snapchats and DMs, you've got to unplug and reflect on what really matters.

And this week might be one of those rare occasions for a number of folks associated with the Warrington Guardian or the town at large.

Just after the deadline for this column last week, I learned of the death of Pat Gill Bolton, a Guardian veteran of 23 years who could trace her newspaper roots back to the 1960s.

Our esteemed former colleague Alan Domville summed up Pat's contribution to the paper far better than I ever could. An exceptional character with more refinement in her little finger than the rest of the newsroom put together, Pat will be greatly missed.

It was heartening to read a swathe of warm tributes online from ex-staffers, when the news was more widely circulated. A fitting swan song for the First Lady of the Academy (and Sankey Street before that).

Funnily enough the scribe who kickstarted the tributes, Ian Kelly, another Guardian legend, also shared an equally poignant story on Facebook, which provoked strong feelings among a much wider circle.

Bulldozers had moved in at Wilderspool and he shared the memory of going to games with his mum and brother Sean at the old ground, recounting how both would get a clip around the ear from her, even in their 20s, if they forgot themselves and used some colourful terraces banter.

Similar reminisces will have echoed in lounges, bars and clubs across town no doubt this week, and I know my own mum still treasures the Wire games she watched as a young girl with her late dad.

I’m fairly certain that one of our Away Day Crew is still paying back the final couple of instalments to Touchers Club for the free bar he put on for his 21st.

Elsewhere over the past seven days a fellow hack, of many years service, has been diagnosed with leukaemia and our prayers have been with her as she contemplates such an uncertain future. Another journo is nursing his critically-ill partner, and my heart goes out to him too.

I've never been one to delve into a little book of wisdom for pithy quotations and 'carpe diem' is just one of several Latin phrases of which I have a hazy grasp.

But in an ever-changing world, with lives being lived at a breakneck pace, sometimes the opportunity to sit back and ponder, and be grateful for whatever small mercies and memories you have, cannot be underestimated.

* EVEN with an inbuilt anathema towards most forms of legalised robbery, I couldn’t help but be intrigued by the announcement that a huge swathe of Warrington, from Fairfield through Oakwoood, parts of Padgate and Paddington, was in line for a cash windfall under the People’s Postcode Lottery.

The blessed citizens of ‘WA1 3’ are in line for a share of £2million apparently, and as a former resident of Willis Street, and later Padgate, I’m fervently hoping there’s plenty of old friends now clutching a ticket in their sweaty palms, dreaming of a new car, foreign holiday or even better.

Due to my anarcho-Communist principles, and an abiding belief that governments and councils should pay for community, arts and leisure initiatives instead of it being funded by a ‘lottery tax’, I refuse to enter any such games of chance.

But I’m not going to be churlish enough to rain on the parade of my former neighbours, who will find out their fate this Saturday at the Park Royal. Especially if the folks happened to have bought a ticket...