'You can always trust the Americans. In the end they will do the right thing, after they have eliminated all the other possibilities.'

Winston Churchill

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, they say. An American tourist came to Tetbury seeking 'a relaxed and sociable market town.'

She found instead over-bearing traffic, pollution, and buildings whose historic importance and appearance were not being respected. It was not somewhere she wanted to stop, to spend money and chat to locals.

Which raises the question 'what is Tetbury for?' Yes, it would be lovely if this, and all the other small towns in the Cotswolds, had pretty buildings, wide roads, piazzas where colourful locals could gather to badinage with friendly foreigners, myriad shops.

A sort of Disneyland world of the days of the wool trade, but with better plumbing and easy parking. There are places where you can find these (Cribbs Causeway might suit) but Tetbury isn't one.

Yes, there are things that can be done to make life just a little easier and safer. We don't need more volunteers counting lorries. We need Highways to act on the obvious. We need to protect, using existing laws, the listed and important buildings.

Complaining last year about building work being done to such a house in Tetbury, I was told that enforcement within any sensible time framework was impossible because the workload far exceeded the staffing at planning. So, more pro-active planners then.

I would love to take a magic wand and change some of the things about this town. A gorgeous village hall, for starters, a building fit for purpose, a joy to the eye, a source of pride. It isn't money that stops that from happening.

There exists a small village mentality amongst some that says only those who were born here, worked here, and lived here for seventy years have a right to an opinion. They disregard the thought that a 'newcomer', someone who has lived in a town for ten or twenty years, will have lived somewhere else and will bring that experience of Another Place to the table.

There is, too, in some officers the Suffering Servant of The Lord Syndrome. They work so hard for us, they say, and with no reward. That, I am afraid, is the nature of the beast. Public service must have its own rewards, universal appreciation is not one of them.

Retailers, too, will always complain. It is their default position. The customer wants everything on his doorstep at a price of his choosing. Visitors, it seems, might want to change us, point out our obvious faults, just like a girl might want to change a new boyfriend. 'I love you, but..'

It doesn't work. Ivana Trump, ex-wife of Donald, put her finger on it when she was a contestant in Big Brother here. (She was, against all my prejudices, brilliant.) Other house-mates – bored, frustrated, angry – turned to her and asked her opinion. 'It is what it is,' she said, and went back to applying another layer of make-up.