Why did the chicken cross the road?

19th MAY 2024

Because the person who’d just bought it from Cheeky Titos couldn’t do a lot else, because all the pavement access is blocked to the popular Ross-on-Wye peri-peri chicken shop!

It was Sunday 12th May 2024 when god decided he wanted to expose poorly chosen construction decisions in Ross-on-Wye by washing all the sand out from under the pavement of Broad Street and dumping it down the hill, making a very disappointing beach out of Brookend Street. No ice creams and about 45 years too late for the games arcade at Danters. Boooo!
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Ross-on-Wye’s Broad Street seems half road-works, half building site, and if you’re into red plastic you really are in for a treat. Come and spend the day in Ross, amble up the pavement (gotta be the right hand one as the other one is a safety hazard) and gaze across at all poster paint red plastic barriers and ripped up pavements.
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Ross-on-Wye has created its own version of Banksy’s Dismaland, a working artwork which also functions as a free-admission maze to rival that of Symonds Yat’s Butterfly Zoo.
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Don’t forget to cast your eyes upwards and get a glimpse of the Market House poking its head over a wooden fence like a glum sandstone chad (it’s an 80s thing). Delight in the wooden fence, if you’re into the kind of thing you see in a Donald Trump campaign video.
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Breathe in the air… oh hang on, there was a broken sewer pipe and a flash flood. Maybe give that a miss.
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Your councillors to the rescue!? Well, ummmm, there’s only so much they can do, but a few independent councillors have been busy trying to help the affected shopkeepers. The then Mayor, Louis Stark was seen looking down a hole a couple of times, one of those occasions worthy of a Ross Gazette photo. Then we had Cllr O’Driscoll using his amateur dramatics experience to pull some sad, quizzical expressions into his phone as he made little vox-pops for social media - we got to learn he wasn’t any happier with Welsh Water than anyone else was.
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Some councillors instead chose only to stick to the oh-so-essential work of turning up for the chance of a photo op with Jesse Norman, presumably before criticising him (because we all know he laid the pavements).
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What a sorry state of affairs, this is Ross-on-Wye where “the birth of tourism” began (so we keep being told), and this of course was back in the pre-peacocks era. Sadly at the moment the town is reduced to people turning up and not regretting if they forgot their camera. Conversations might go “shall we stay for a bit longer and get something to eat?”, “Naaaaaa, let’s go”.
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Well, floody hell, the public and particularly the shopkeepers who have been affected so badly demand answers - and so it came to pass that the day after, there was a Ross Town Council meeting. Hooray!
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Well, not hooray, calm down, but the public participation certainly had a bit more in the way of public and a bit more in the way of participation than usual.
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People wanted answers, sandbags were discussed, information was requested, and on a couple of occasions people spoke over each other.
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Stop. Hammer Time!
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MCllr Hammer Bev Pope didn’t want have to resort to this, but she wasn’t having it. Chairing the meeting she has a hammer to use to call people to order, and use it she did! In a YouTube video (not essential watching, warning, it was dull, it was a council meeting after all - watch here) you can see a bit of inexperience in the technique department was on show. It had an air of ‘elderly relative tries playing smack the rat after only just being told how it works’ about it.
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Now, apologies up front, the word “politics” is about to pop up again, YAWWWWN. Yes, yes, politics has no place on a Town Council, but a couple of councillors wanted to bring it up. It’s a sad addiction, but unfortunately there is no rehab available for the condition.
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Yes, while shopkeepers were asking about what is happening, looking for hope, Cllrs Louis Stark and Ed O’Driscoll decided it was a good idea to point the finger at Jesse Norman MP and those evil Conservatives. Yesss, that’s right, the very same Jesse Norman that 4 days later their fellow Lib Dems decided to turn up to see for the photo opportunity, pretty much the first anyone had seen of them in town since the damage.
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On a serious note, three Ross Town Councillors are also County Councillors (which is a paid role unlike being a town councillor) and the issues really are ones for the County Council. One of them is Cllr Louis Stark, one is Ed O’Driscoll and the other, if you have a problem, if no-one else can help and IF you can find them, maybe you can hire, Chris Bartrum.
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Please cross the road to get some peri-peri chicken from those lovely people at Cheeky Titos, I’m sure they’d appreciate your support! You can also order from them online.
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Please also support all the shops down Broad Street and Brookend Street, please don’t let the mess put you off, the businesses are open and they could do with your help.

EDIT, FURTHER NEWS: It appears, very sadly, that Cheeky Titos has closed its doors. It hasn't been open since sometime before 10th June 2024 :(