HAVING just been compelled to chokingly consume the strongest, and sweetest, cup of tea I could muster, I can now type sufficiently well to relate the opening lines of a local horror story.

HAVING just been compelled to chokingly consume the strongest, and sweetest, cup of tea I could muster, I can now type sufficiently well to relate the opening lines of a local horror storey.

It goes like this: It was a murky, damp day and so the bright colour pictures inside the Mercury were most elevating. Charity walks, camaraderie at the Steam Fair, proms in the Garden, and so on.

However, within an article, lurking beneath the M5's noisey (but tough) surface, the deep rumblings of "Oh no", a North Somerset Council authorised panel, set to peer out from the abyss, and squint, with savage incompetence, into the swirling mists of the possibility of the council taking over motorway maintenance from the Highways Agency.

Obviously, I can write no more. Having considered, with a few others, the possibility of purchasing an ex-army half-track to ease the pot-holed passage to do the local shopping, I cannot bring myself to encourage your readership to even imagine a vital motorway in the care of Cllr Ap Rees and entourage.

Please forgive me readers. We have enough council kafuffles to worry over, laugh about, and re-worry over, without having to break out onto the Queen's Highway and overrun the drains with tears.

P HUNTER

Trewartha Park

Weston