Book yourself some time to celebrate an important day

As regular readers will have noted, there appears to be specialawareness days, weeks or months for practically every form ofillness or social condition.

They are all worthy ways of raising the profile of importantconcerns but they also have to fight their corner against lots ofother awareness events such as last week's much-vaunted (and verytasty) National Chip Week.

Today, however, is one awareness day that really does deservesupport by all - World Book Day.

This is designed to remind people - and especially young people -of the importance of the written word and the joys to be foundwithin the pages of a book, be it an enjoyable story or aninformative non-fiction work.

It is good to see that schools throughout this area have eagerlytapped into the World Book Day concept and there have been plenty ofactivities all week.

As well as being a good awareness raiser, it seems particularlyimportant to have events celebrating books and reading foryoungsters. That is because many youngsters are so enthralled bycomputers that to remind them of the way they can fire theirimaginations through the pages of a book as well as via the internethas to be a good thing.

So, I hope everyone applauds today's special focus. And the bestway to celebrate it is simple - read!