ONE of the advantages of writing a weekly column is that you can, from time to time, enjoy a really good rant.

It's an opportunity that I have seldom taken advantage of in the past 15 months, not that I haven’t been tempted.

Yes, I’ve had the occasional dig at easy targets such as traffic, empty shops and pubs, dog muck, street car sales, the bus lane, the town council, Capita, talking shops, Jack’s Key lodge, councillors, “property developer” Ted Ward and...

Well, yes. There have been a few moans. But not a real Grumpy Old Man rant.

I had been thinking it was time to let rip and then at a party I bumped into Dave and Kath Reece who ran Hodkinson’s florists in the town centre for many years.

“Just the man,” said Dave. “Don’t let him disappear!” cried Kath, grabbing my arm and almost spilling my rather large Benedictine.

Almost. There wasn’t much danger.

I brushed aside an unseemly row about who was going to bend my ear first and spun a coin.

Dave won first crack. “Hoodies!” he yelled. “What they need is a number printing on their hoods, so they can easily be identified.

“Every time they pull up their hood we’ll know who they are.

"And they’ll have to watch their step, the little perishers.” He didn’t actually say 'perishers'.

“Is that a good idea – or what?” he asked. I nodded.

“Tell him about your idea of clipping ’em at birth,” said Kath, helpfully.

I must have looked puzzled so he explained: “Everyone gets stuck with an ID tag.

"A bit like SatNav. So we can keep an eye on ’em. Good, eh?”

“Perhaps a bit OTT,” I suggested, turning to Kath for a perhaps more tempered point of view.

I wasn’t disappointed. “Right,” she said, “When you were a kid, how many times was your school closed because of a bit of snow?”

Er, never. “Right. And what happens these days? A light flurry and everything shuts down.

“Most likely they put up the shutters the night before.

"It’s madness. And another thing. How big was the staff at your primary school?”

Well, about six teachers, a headmaster, a couple of old dears dishing out the gruel and, er, that was about it.

“Ha! You can easily double and treble that now,” said Kath triumphantly.

“Every class seems to have two or even three teachers or teaching assistants.

"They’re falling over themselves. No wonder schools have no money.”

I’m not sure about Dave’s plans to curb the hoodie menace but Kath makes a lot of sense.

Over the past few days I’ve asked a lot of people on the wrong side of 50 about their schooldays.

Not one could remember a school closing because of bad weather. Can you?

* Here's another thought from Kath. “Can we get the builders who threw up the excellent new Lidl store on the main road to come back and finish off the academy and the leisure centre?” I’ll ask.