WHAT a glow of Christmas love it radiates, with the second Oswestry area woman in as many months, walking or running in memory of a lost parent.

After congratulating head office hair salon owner Caroline Jones in October for successfully tackling Kilimanjaro in memory of the mum she lost as a child – now 26-year-old bakery worker Florence Roberts of Hengoed has raised £3,000.

It’s for the Midlands Air Ambulance charity, from a punishing 50-mile fell run. Medics tried in vain to save her dad who suffered a cardiac arrest driving his tractor. What wonderful Christmas tributes.

THE run-up to Christmas for Simon Wright, Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust chief executive officer, was embarrassingly blighted when the trust was put into special measures! With only a third of categories inspected by the Care Quality Commission rated ‘good’, its damning overall rating was ‘inadequate’.

The day the report came out, it led the BBC’s Six o’Clock News, where the CEO emphasised he would not be resigning. Telford MP Lucy Allen tagged him “oblivious to the gravity of the situation” but trust chairman Ben Reid said that “too much change could get in the way of driving improvement”! What a truly humiliating way to start 2019.

WE HAVE a memorial in Cae Glas Park for Victoria Cross recipient Sergeant Harold Edward Whitfield – but now St Oswald’s Church parish magazine has highlighted a second VC, in Major General John Vaughan Campbell of Broom Hall. As Major and Brevet Lieutenant Colonel of the Third Battalion Coldstream Guards, he received his VC for the “most conspicuous bravery and able-leading in an attack”.

THE ink was barely dry on last week’s Tizer – referring to the new The County of Montgomeryshire steam train being built – when Welshpool light railway volunteer Dave Arden reminded me of its own smaller version, which is called ‘Sir Drefaldwyn’ (Welsh for Montgomeryshire). It has been with them since 1969 and is just completing a major overhaul ready for next season.

VOLUNTEERS on the Montgomery Canal are just bursting to replace the ‘phantom’ Schoolhouse Bridge at Crickheath with a real one. When the brick bridge was demolished for being unsafe, the gap got filled with soil and topped tarmac. It’s the last serious Shropshire blockage in reopening the canal to Welshpool.

SANTA trains run from Oswestry Station this Saturday and next – and from Llynclys Station to the ‘Gingerbread House’ this Sunday and next. The £8 tickets cover food and a child’s present.

DURING Oswestry’s Christmas Parade, St Oswald’s Parish Church displayed a board advertising free coffee and mince pies. But it was just yards from the Oswestry Visitor Centre, where its normally popular Heritage Centre Café remained empty for most of the morning!