MY KIND OF TOWN

I'm in Ely in Cambridgeshire, recently voted the 'kindest city in the UK' by those people who drive Santa round in his convoy of Coca-Cola trucks.

I'm not one to argue with the coke elves. It's pretty nice. Tiny cobbled streets interweave in a medieval fashion past quiet and quaint little shops and Tudor-fronted buildings. The magnificent cathedral rises above the rooftops and trees line the happy little avenues and walkways. It is the kind of place that generates kindness.

I'm here to see my excellent friends and their children, who are adorable. They say if you want to remind yourself of the joy life can bring, you should be around children. Talk about an imagination revolution! These kids have it by the bucketload. Thanks to today's adventures, I now live on the Moon and arrived in Ely by electricity, am a sort of puppet robot with an earlobe for an off-switch and I inflate like a ballon if anyone pulls the sleeves of my jumper.

You do feel the kindness here. However, a similar survey a few weeks ago pinpointed Reading (where I actually live when I'm not scoffing Gorgonzola on the shores of the Sea of Tranquility) as the 'nicest' place to live in Britain.

We Readingenzians raised a collective eyebrow at that; a town famed for a questionably sculpted statue and a street that smells so bad its nickname is more famous than its real one. As I pointed out to someone this morning, Jerome K Jerome describes it as 'dismal' at best.

But this has made me think. My town does seem to have a reputation in some quarters. Is it right for me to slag it off? Is it really any worse than say, Leiceseter or Dundee or Norwich? Alright, from a leafy suburb of quiet and quaint old Ely, the rudeness of Reading seems an easy target - but should I be acting as an ambassador rather than a kind of escapee asylum seeker? Should I be championing my town rather than agreeing with the chorus of dingbashers?

Weirdly, this has made me want to prove that Reading isn't all Smelly Alley and Butts Centre. Perhaps there are parts of our town that we should be a bit more proud of after all. It might not be the emerald city of the south; it seems unlikely that Santa will stop off for a coke with Reading Elvis and remember the old days when our most famous townsman was Lenny The Tramp.

However, it might be a start. It seems like a challenge, and I'm in the mood to be kinder about the place where I live. And I think kindness can be infectious if you let it.