IT IS carnival day just before noon and I walk through the Castle Grounds.

Many of the stalls there are plastic-sheeted against the rain.

Families wander among them, looking skyward for a hint of improvement in the weather.

I hear a voice and realise that something is happening in the newly-created skate park. I go across.

The skate park is wet.

Many young skateboarders are clustered looking at a young man with a microphone who seems to be thanking a line-up of formally dressed people, some wearing chains of office.

I ask the young person next to me what is going on?

It seems it is the official opening of the skate park.

The young man with the microphone is thanking, one by one, older and younger businessmen, councillors, county councillors, funding bodies, the committee of Tamworth Wheeled Sports Club (the voluntary body responsible for bringing the skate park into being) and the skateboarders themselves.

He thanks everyone who has, in anyway, helped or contributed to the raising of the finance (over £130,000), which enabled the park to be built.

He then tells us that, when the rain stops, the skate-boarders intend to do a sponsored skate for on-going needs and Acorns Children's Hospice.

It is a way of saying thank you for their park yet remaining mindful of children denied the experience of skateboarding because of their illnesses.

I ask about the young man with the microphone.

I learn that he, for the last eight years has carried the vision of a skate park for Tamworth, and has turned that vision into a reality.

No-one thanks him. The crowd disperses.

I go and say that I think he should have been thanked above all the rest.

He gives a remarkable and praiseworthy answer: "We have the skate park. It is well used and that is what it is all about. It's not about me."

I offer him good wishes and walk on, humbled.

Tamworth OAP