GOSH, aren't we lucky not to have such refined taste? Life is so much simpler for us peasants. We see hanging baskets, busy borders, tub, pots and containers overflowing with vivid begonias and bright busy lizzies and we - simple souls - feel our hearts lift at the sight of such happy colourful profusion.

Not Sir Roy Strong.

The old killjoy thinks that hanging baskets are garish vulgar and crude.

Oh dear.

He even wants to give a medal to the phantom flower killers of Saltburn, who doctored the watering tank with weedkiller and thereby reduced the town's blooms to brown wilting stems.

Too many towns, he says, are being ruined by too many bright flowers.

True, there are displays that dazzle the eye - think of the border by the crossing to Safeway on the edge of Darlington. But I wouldn't want to kill them. Just blink a bit and reach for the shades.

And yes, it would be good if councils devoted as much effort to the all-year-round greenery as they do to the summer shows.

Until this week, I have had great pleasure from Saltburn's flowers, as have others - a number of readers have written to commend them. I particularly liked the boat on the way into town.

And I like the hanging baskets and window boxes outside pubs (watch out for the Britannia in Darlington). I even like the craze for putting gro-bags on top of bus shelters. It's daft, it's over the top. But it is wonderfully brave and when the flowers come cascading down over the graffiti'd walls, it's a cheering sight.

Who cares if the colours clash? My art teacher used to say that colours in nature never really clash, but maybe Sir Roy knows better.

Yes, of course it is wonderful to see a beautifully designed and restrained planting scheme. But we all need a bit of colour in our lives.

And I'm just glad I'm peasant enough to appreciate it.

OH yes, we say, we're all sick of too much sex and violence on television.

So then we get a nice Bible-reading virgin on Big Brother and what happens? Viewing figures plummet.

Good might be better, but bad is always so much more interesting.

MANY students are now working up to 50 hours at paid jobs in term time.

Even many students at Oxford, where they once frowned if you got a job in the holidays, now have term time jobs.

If all these students have all this time to spare, wouldn't it be better if they squashed more academic work into their time table and reduced the degree course to a much cheaper two years?

Or is that too simple for academics to cope with?

CAN three quarters of adults really not know anything about tides and currents? That's what the coastguards discovered from a recent survey.

Each year, a handful of children get murdered by strangers. Dreadful, yes. But far many more are drowned in the sea or rivers, fall down cliffs, get swept out to sea on inflatables, or get cut off by tides

We are paranoid about paedophiles, yet seem blissfully blas about much more possible dangers.

Enjoy your hols....

WE see the great buildings, walls, roads and remains of the Roman Empire and we are impressed.

Then archaeologists find a pot of face cream, probably offered to the gods by a Roman lady two thousand years ago. Her finger marks are still smeared on the lid. It could, at a glance, be the same sort of pot that sits on thousands of dressing tables for exactly the same reasons as that Roman lady had her cream.

And suddenly, across time, we can identify with someone who lived all those centuries ago.

Big things are important, but it is the small details of everyday life that link us to each other.

WHAT no postcards? Apparently, we're not sending them anymore, preferring text messages instead.

Boring.

Rude ones, crude ones, stunning views, all bring a little cheer into the day. Much better than the gloating beep of a text message.

And as the leaves on the trees fade and die and spring into new life again, so do the postcards on the filing cabinet curl up and fade - but still let us daydream through the winter of holidays to come.

PS: MICHAEL Barrymore is in negotiations about hosting a new quiz show. He has, apparently turned his life round.

Maybe. And if so, all credit to him. Everyone deserves a second chance.

But somehow, I think we all know just a little bit too much about Barrymore's seriously unpleasant private life to be able to laugh happily at his antics anymore.

Back to the wilderness for a bit longer.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/ news/griffiths.html