As we come into Christmas week, when we all wind down and get into the festive mood, ready to enjoy a few days off work and relax with friends and family, there are some people who will find this a difficult time of year.

I’m talking about anyone who has suffered a bereavement in the past 12 months, or who has been unlucky enough to lose someone they loved at Christmas time.

It is very hard to put a brave face on things in those circumstances, especially if the loss is a recent one, or you have a young family who will be expecting to celebrate as usual, or the person who died was themselves young.

Even years after someone’s death, that time of year can bring back vivid reminders.

Grief takes everyone in different ways, and the recent tragedies in west Wiltshire, which have seen four young men killed on our roads, have sparked some very modern expressions of genuine and heartfelt grief. They may seem baffling to some, such as emotional tributes on Facebook, mountains of roadside flowers and colourful attire at funerals. I can’t see what harm any of these do to anyone else.

So it seems very hard-hearted of Wiltshire Council to insist this week that it is going to stick to its ‘policy of not allowing roadside memorials’, when the friends of one of these young men have asked if they can put a small, respectful memorial stone at the spot where he died. The council says roadside memorials ‘distract drivers’.

Not noticeably so, and in fact they seem to go almost unnoticed. When this week the Wiltshire Times asked when this policy was introduced, because it seems at odds with the existence of other similar tributes in the area, the council at first denied any such memorials existed. There are, in fact, several discreet memorial signs, crosses and little tributes to people sadly killed on our roads dotted around the county. Once a year, and often at Christmas, many of these carry a bunch of flowers placed by a grieving family. For some years an entire festival was held around the memorial to 50s rock star Eddie Cochran in Chippenham. What’s the harm in that?

When questioned further, the council said the rule had been introduced ‘about 10 years ago’, but couldn’t actually quote chapter and verse on what the rules said and when they were approved by our councillors. I hope they were, in fact, approved and were not simply introduced on the whim of an over-health-and-safety-conscious council officer, frightened of being blamed for causing an accident should another happen at the same spot.

Curiously, in places where repeated accidents have happened – and there are some notoriously dangerous stretches of roads in Wiltshire – I’ve never heard that ‘roadside distractions’ were to blame for any of the accidents that have claimed lives.