GREEN lights all round.

Wirral really is an environmentally-friendly place.

We are rightly celebrating the fact that it has been awarded more green flags than any area in the North West.

Happily more metaphorical green flags will be flying again in October.

We will welcome a certain president from the United States here in the 'Fall' (as our American friends call autumn).

No, it's not fake news about Donald Trump - but the president of Central Park in New York who is crossing the Atlantic, y'all.

This president will be part of the World Urban Parks European Congress 2017 featuring high-profile speakers from across the globe.

This gathering of the great and good of greenery will be at New Brighton Pavilion from October 14 to 21 and will explore key issues around the crucial role of parks for towns and cities.

What an honour.

The focus will also be on the "challenge of sustainability and the celebration of the rich heritage that parks can create within our communities."

Hear, hear.

Sight-seeing is on the cards, too, with tours of New Brighton promenade, Vale Park, Flaybrick Memorial Gardens, Birkenhead Park and Port Sunlight Village.

The Congress will also be at Birkenhead's splendid Town Hall and they are looking forward to taking in Hamilton Square and the public gardens and exhibition.

As well as a trade show and exhibition there will be a symposium on Edward Kemp - superintendent at Birkenhead Park (opened in 1847) and a leading landscaper and designer of parks and gardens.

Maybe I can pitch my idea - first mooted in the Inferno - to have an annual "Wirral Parks Celebration Day" all over the borough.

After all, when it comes to parks and gardens, we are now leaders in this field.

*

FEATHERED fact - birds were the first to tweet, but did you know the world's first smiley emoji has been discovered on a 1700 BC vase - unearthed in Turkey.

Who knows what archaeologists will dig up next- Tutankhamun's Facebook page.

Contemporary media has certainly changed the way we communicate.

I recently received a text that said cu@8nXK.

I didn't know what it meant until a friend translated it as "See you at 8 o'clock in the Cross Keys pub." 

I am not a fan of abbreviated words – by the way why is the word abbreviation so long?

*

HELLO , hello, hello – Gina Markham is a copper-bottomed author.

I am being very PC here.

One-time policewoman Gina, who lives in Meols, has created the character Mavis Upton - the star of her very funny first book called Handcuffs, Truncheon and a Polyester Thong.

Now Gina tells the Inferno she has received some arresting news - her debut book has been longlisted ... for the curiously titled Long Longlist for the Guardian's Not the Booker Prize 2017

Phew, that's a mouthful.

And Gina has also heard that from the end of this month her very funny debut novel will be on sale at WH Smiths airport holiday shops.

Now it's plane sailing for Gina.

I rest my case.

*

ONE woman who also made a fair cop was the Princess of Wales currently dominating our TV schedules as we mark the anniversary her news shattering death in 1987.

Diana famously went on a night out with Fergie dressed as a policewoman.

She did have a sense of fun - something I saw first hand at an anti-drug seminar in London.

Di flashed her wide smile at me and said "Hello", but protocol (a burly Special Branch man) demanded I couldn't answer her back.

Throughout the event she made a very thought-provoking speech.

Channel 4 are gloating that Sunday's documentary In Her own Words is their biggest rating programme this year.

I would prefer to watch a TV production that focused on her legacy – the anti-land mine campaign being one caring achievement.

We should remember her for what she achieved for society rather than what she became - the reluctant Paparazzi Princess.

*

I AM all festivaled out and I don't even go to them anymore.

I only have to hear the word 'festival' and I think, "oh no, not another one."

The very word Glastonbury conjures up images of mud, being soaked, queuing for over- priced food and the portable toilets.

But organisers should learn from those festivals that go horribly wrong such as last weekend's Hope and Glory musical wash-out in Liverpool.

It was "Hopeless and Gory" when it came to organisation.

Councils up and down the country please heed this public relations disaster.

Every single box MUST be ticked before tickets go on sale to the public who are the people who keep such festivals alive.

*

VOYEURISM sadly thrives on the box.

Just as we waved goodbye to Love Island another nasty reality show arrives.

Make or Break on Channel 5 has sent eight couples to Mexico to sort out their problems.

More good-looking, vacuous wannabe models with the IQs of mountain goats.

Here's an idea - put all the commissioning editors in a warehouse in Grimsby and film them only letting them out when they come up with a decent entertainment idea.

Peter Grant