Editorial June/July 2014

Editorial

The bluebells are barely over but it feels like summer has arrived as I write this after an (unusually) sunny and hot afternoon at the Spring Church Fair at St Agatha’s. The sun brought out lots of villagers so the church did well making a fantastic £1944, much more than last year.

Brightfest on 14 June is coming up fast and this year it looks like it will be better than ever with 2 stages of live music, food, community games, and more, see page 4. Back by popular demand is the Summer Concert at St Agatha’s on Sunday 22 June, see page 3; and there is of course our traditional Village Fete and Produce Show on Saturday 5 July, this year at Sotwell House. The centre pages have the Show schedule and entry form. Why not try something new and have a go at entering? There are some new classes this year, so take a look.

Later, on 17 July, FOBS is holding the Brightwell School Summer Fair, combining it this year with the end of year party which sounds like it will be good fun. There are also some exciting events being organised by the FOBS Committee over the summer, details on page 5. And talking about the school, we extend a warm welcome to the new head teacher, Rachael Bentovim, who I hope will find our village and school a very friendly, welcoming place.

Now that the summer evenings are getting longer, more of us have been getting down to the newly refurbished Kings Meadow Tennis Courts. It’s a great facility to have in the village which I hope will now be used more again. The new Tennis Club has got off to a cracking start with over 100 members, and they organised a very enjoyable Open Day in early May. More details of club nights, coaching and other events planned by the BCSKMTC Committee are on page 18.

You might have been wondering what has happened to your Parish Plan Questionnaire results? All will be revealed when the new Parish Plan is launched, hopefully, at the Village Fete on 5 July. Jason has given us an update with some tasty morsels of what’s to come. I know potholes concerned many of you. Some of these have got much larger after the winter rains. If you have concerns about any specific potholes being left unrepaired, the advice is to contact Oxfordshire County Council.

I look forward to seeing you at some of the village events over the summer – and lets hope the sun continues to shine!

Helen Connor

Letters

Many thanks to the garden hit-squad

We would like to thank the gardening volunteers for their kindness and hard work on Saturday 22 March.

Our garden has always been very special to us, but unfortunately since Stan’s devastating accident, nature has taken over, and Hilary Rogerson very kindly organised a Hit-Squad of very generous helpers who did an absolute transformation of the rather big garden. They were an amazing and very impressive team and even went as far as ordering impressive weather. We can now get planting early potatoes in the freshly dug vegetable patch and flowers in the border.

Stan and I are incredibly grateful and are looking forward to summer in the garden, so thank you all again so much.

Geraldine and Stan Maciak

BrightFest 2014

Saturday 14 June at the Rec starting at 12.00 till late

Don't forget BrightFest is nearly upon us. Come and listen to some fantastic live music, have a drink at the Red Lion bar, eat at the Covent Garden Grill, (we are very excited to have a pop up restaurant from London at BrightFest this year). Teas, Coffees, Home Made Cakes and loads more. A great day out for all the family.

Also don't forget to get your raffle tickets, amazing prizes include an I-Pad, a flight for 2 over Oxfordshire, a case of wine and a meal for 2 at the Red Lion.

We would like to say a big thank you to Ridgeway Motors for their very generous donation. Also, a thank you to our other sponsors who have given time or money to the event - Loddon Brewery, Root One, Brightwell Village Stores, Clive Collett, Chilli Pickle, Red Lion Pub, Russell Partnership and Ben Pampliogne.

Look forward to seeing you there.

Sue, Helen, Angus and Celia

Brightwell School

I am delighted to introduce myself as the new Headteacher at Brightwell Primary School. I have had a wonderful welcome from children, parents, staff and villagers during these last few weeks. I feel very pleased to be taking up my first Headship in such a lovely village.

I am looking forward to being very much involved in the local community and strengthening village links. I am also an active parent with teens as well as a toddler, so you will no doubt see me in the village with my family so please introduce yourself and say hello.

Rachael Bentovim

Friends of Brightwell School (FOBS)

FOBS is the school charity for Brightwell Primary School. It exists to raise funds for school projects and equipment for the children, enhancing their experience during their time at the school. FOBS also exists to promote social events so that teachers, parents and children can all interact and get to know each other better. FOBS’ great strength lies in the community spirit within the school and the village and from the input by parents and school staff into the fundraising plans, all the way from embryonic ideas for future events to selling tickets and manning the stalls at those events. The main ongoing projects at school, which FOBS are helping to raise money for, are improvements to the playground/outside learning areas and updating of the school’s ICT (information and communication technology) equipment.

Throughout the summer we have some wonderful events planned including:

Tea in the Park – Families Past and Present - A fantastic opportunity for families old and new to meet up; planned to run once a month

Family Night at the Red Lion - Towards the end of term, ie. mid-July, probably on a Wednesday

World Cup Tournament - Friday 27 June at Brightwell School, with a big input by the senior class, Discovery

Howl at the Moon Campout - Date TBC, possibly on a Saturday night during the summer holiday

Summer Fair and End of Year Party -Thursday 17 July at Brightwell School – a fantastic send off for the year 6 children

26 Mile Sponsored Walk - Saturday 27 September - walk the entire distance or just do legs of it.

We always need volunteers to help run these events. These volunteers are often parents and other people with affiliations to the school, but we are appealing now to the villagers of Brightwell to ask if anyone can spare some time to help with any of the events. Even if you cannot help on the day, any skills or expertise or equipment you can help us with would be hugely appreciated.

Please do get in touch if you can spare us some of your time. We need the help of local people to make these events the success they have the potential to be. Please email us at brightwellfobs@gmail.com if you can help or if you have any questions about the forthcoming events or FOBS itself. Thank you Brightwell for all your support!!

FOBS Committee

Parish Church

I type this with some trepidation, wondering what the weather is going to be like for our Spring Fair. We had a deluge last year but it didn’t seem to deter people. The rains came at the right time for Hollywood to be launching their latest blockbuster ‘Noah’. I haven’t seen it so I better be careful passing judgement, but when I heard that Russell Crowe had landed the lead role I can guess the kind of movie it might turn into.

I find the lower budget stuff is usually more interesting. I was at a friend’s house in Gloucestershire recently and they had ‘Netflix’ on their ‘box’. It was soon after the death of Bob Hoskins so I was prompted to have another look at ‘A Prayer for the Dying’. It’s pretty strong stuff in places but there is a coherent story and it doesn’t treat religion with cynicism. It illustrated the intractability of sectarianism, but even more so, of the violent response. Archbishop Justin Welby has just been on the radio commenting that the reason why Boko Haram have been partly successful in Northern Nigeria is that they have preached a strong, and often violent, message to young minds in an area of much poverty.

Strength (worldly strength), violence and cynicism often have their sway for a while but we humans are made for something more than such things – it’s how we’re put together. We are hard-wired to believe in something a little bit bigger than ourselves, it’s just hard to pin that down, so to speak. When I asked at our recent Mothering Sunday service for people to write about the kinds of qualities which build good families, churches and communities, it was clear to me that our sense of cynicism hadn’t quite driven out our belief in something better. They were collected up and put at the back of church where people coming in and out could read the post-it notes. They said things like: ‘patience’, ‘trust’, ‘fairness’, ‘compassion’, ‘caring’, ‘listening’, ‘encouragement’, ‘kindness’ and ‘hope’.

 As St Paul says: ‘there’s no law against such things’. So let’s be encouraged that they are still present and valued in this community, and let’s keep working hard for such things this year, and we’ll be enabled to make some worthwhile progress together. And maybe people will see that there’s something worthwhile in faith too, so long as we keep our senses of proportion and humour.

 Come and see us, and sing with us, sometime (not least at our Summer Concert on 22 June, but any ‘old’ Sunday will do) - suspend your sense of disbelief – I double-dare you! Love & Prayers,

Jeremy

Community Assocation

Village Fete – Saturday 5 July at 2-4.30pm at Sotwell House

This year’s Village Fete will be in the lovely gardens of Sotwell House, kindly hosted again by David and Jennie Dobbin. Our plans are well advanced and I am sure that the weather will be perfect again this year.

As usual, the Fete works as a collaboration between groups in the village. Each activity is managed by a separate group or individual (the PCC run the teas, for example). The Community Association collects the funds from each activity. Then the CA invites groups to submit requests for grants from our coffers (which usually includes other money we have collected at events during the year).

We are always looking for volunteers to help with the set up before this event, which is one of the highpoints in the Brightwell Calendar

You can find the schedule and entry form for the Flower and Produce Show in the centre pages of this Villager issue The Show appeals to all ages, of course, and we try to ensure the Fete always has a good balance of activities.

As well as the tried and tested stalls and games (bouncy castle, coconut shies, teas, tombola, books, brass band etc.) look out for something different.

Committee members will be collecting contributions to the white elephant, book and bottle stalls during the week before the Fete, so now is a good time to start thinking about what you are planning to discard. Please remember that we can’t take any electrical goods to sell, because of liability in case of accidents, and all donations (especially toys) must be in good working order. They simply won’t sell otherwise.

Autumn Event – Saturday 18 October, 2014

Some 5 years or so ago we had an amazing evening of entertainment playing American Bingo... but with a difference. It was not just a question of getting the numbers in the correct line, but a whole range of different themes and ways to win prizes. People said it was one of the best events we have run so why not a repeat!

James Davys, Chairman

Parish Council

AGM

Thank you to everyone who came to the Annual Parish Meeting on Tuesday 15 April.

Jason Debney, Chairman of the Community Led Plan working group, very kindly came and gave us a fascinating update on some of the initial results from the plan. The aim is for the plan to be published in time for the Village Fete this summer.

Crispin Evans gave us a great talk on how Long Wittenham had bought and restored the red telephone box in the High Street and installed a defibrillator with help from The Community Heartbeat Trust. He encouraged the Parish to fundraise and buy a defibrillator for Brightwell-cum-Sotwell. The Parish has already been offered two generous donations towards the cost from the Fairthorne Memorial Trust and The High Road Church & Gospel Hall and we will be looking at other ways to generate the remaining funds. The aim is to install two or three defibrillators across the Parish.

Neighbourhood Plan

The Neighbourhood Plan is progressing, though there are difficulties due to the boundary review. The working group would really love more people with appropriate skills to join them. If you are interested in getting involved in shaping the future of the Parish or would like more information, please contact Lucy Dalby, the Parish Clerk at:

bcsparishcouncil@googlemail.com

Helen Baines

Parish Plan Update

We hope to launch the Parish Plan at the Village Fete on 5 July. In the meantime, the committee has been busy finalising the analysis from the Questionnaire. The way that the results have been analysed allowed us to look at how questions were answered according to age group, sex, where you live, and so on. On the whole there was very little significant difference in your views about the parish whether you are 24 or 74, male or female, live in Bakers Lane or Church Lane, Shillingford Hill or Mackney. One notable exception was graveyards – these became more important the older one gets!

Each of the seven working groups has now completed their analysis and these results have been passed onto the team that are writing the final report. A number of key themes have emerged. There are those unique issues that affect Shillingford Hill, Sires Hill, the main village or Mackney only and there are those issues that are relevant across the parish. The Parish Plan suggests that we are a strong, vibrant, close knit community with many different elements all helping to shape the way that the place thrives. We are a happy bunch and pretty content with our lot.

The biggest issue is the potential erosion of the countryside and the rural character of our settlements as Oxfordshire continues to boom and develop. This is not just an issue facing us but each and every parish in the region. There are many suggestions on how we can maintain our rural character and these will form a major theme running through the report. The way that we are trapped by passing traffic continues to be an important issue - whether this is turning out of the village onto the main road or crossing the Shillingford Road or A4130 to get to the Sinodun Hills. The on-going issue of dog mess, speeding cars, the success of the Village Stores, housing (the Parish Plan will inform the Neighbourhood Plan), the need for better playground equipment and more formal activities for young people are also important (to mention just a few).

It has been a long slog getting the Parish Plan to this stage but we are nearly there.

Jason Debney

Flower and Produce Show 2014

The show bench – according to the BBC’s Big Allotment Challenge – is the vegetable equivalent of the catwalk. Could this be why so many of our village’s talented growers are shy about displaying their wares?

We are grateful to the small pool of regular exhibitors who fill our benches every July. However, there’s still room for many more. And this means you: dig up your own garden or allotment, chivvy your neighbours, and make this the year of the show vegetable!

If fruit and vegetables aren’t your thing, look out your vintage bread, cake and biscuit recipes for our World War One Bake-Off. You could use recipes handed down through the generations, or more prosaically trawl the internet using what the BBC would no doubt call ‘a well-known search engine’.

World Cup fever creeps into the schedule with a men’s flower arrangement on a football theme, and junior classes for a model of a football stadium. There is a new flower arranging class for under-16s, an expanded handicraft section – and this year, visitors to the show tent will get a chance to exercise their democratic rights on photos entered into the popular vote class. The theme? Our Village.

If you have any questions, call our chairman, Paul Chilton, on 836661 or nab any member of the committee (and this year we are delighted to welcome Alec McGivan to our number).

Sally Dugan

BRIGHTWELL-CUM-SOTWELL FLOWER AND PRODUCE SHOW
AT THE VILLAGE FETE JULY 5th 2014
TO BE HELD IN THE GROUNDS OF SOTWELL HOUSE

By kind permission of David and Jenny Dobbin

Entries received 9 – 11 am. NO LATE ENTRIES after 10.30. NO LATE ENTRIES accepted for Classes 1-5.

Entrance Fee: 25p each adult entry – 10p each junior entry. Entries after 6 pm on Wednesday July 2nd charged double.

The show will open to the public at 2 pm. Exhibitors are asked to collect exhibits and prize cards at 4 pm.

TROPHIES

The Chilton Cup is awarded for the best exhibit in the fruit and vegetable classes.

The Win Glendenning Memorial Salver is awarded for the best flower arranging exhibit.

Two trophies are awarded in memory of Gilbert Talbot. The Talbot Rose Bowl is awarded for the best rose exhibit. The Talbot Cup is awarded on a points system, but may not be won by the same person for two years running.

The Joan Sheard Cup will be awarded for the best under-16 entry in an adult class. Trophies will also be awarded for the top two junior classes.

The Swan Allotments Cup is awarded for the best-kept allotment. Judging takes place during the week before the show.

THE SCHEDULE

PHOTO TO BE JUDGED BY POPULAR VOTE: ‘OUR VILLAGE’ (Max size 7”x5”)

Prize: £10 voucher for the village shop.

Flower Arranging.

Height is unlimited, except for miniature arrangements

1. A miniature flower arrangement. Max 4” x 4” x 4” (10cm x 10 cm x 10 cm).

2.A hand tied bunch of flowers for a footballer’s wife or girlfriend (accessories
allowed). Max 15” x 15” (38 cm x 38 cm)

3. An arrangement to commemorate the centenary of the First World War
(accessories allowed). Max 12” x 12” (30.5 cm x 30.5 cm).

4. A bowl of floating flowers.

5. UNDER-16s ONLY An arrangement of garden flowers Max 10” high x 10” wide
(25.5 cm x 25.5 cm)

6. MEN ONLY An arrangement on a football theme. Max 15” x 15” (38 cm x 38
cm)

Flowers and Vegetables.

7. Top Gardener: A vase of garden flowers, and a box of fruit and/or vegetables
3–5 varieties, max size 16” x 12” (40 cm x 30.5 cm)

8. A Vase of Cottage Garden Favourites - 9 stems, one variety or mixed.

9. Most scented flower, single or small bunch of up to 5 stems.

10. A rose, Hybrid Tea – 1 stem.

11. A rose, multi-headed – 1 stem.

12. Three stems flowering shrub, not rose – one variety or mixed.

13. Most unusual potted plant, flowering or foliage

14. Dish of soft fruit of one kind

15. 3 sticks of rhubarb

16. Box of vegetables – 3 varieties. Box not to exceed 16” x 12” (40 cm x 30.5 cm)

17. Box of salad vegetables. Box not to exceed 16” x 12” (40 cm x 30.5 cm)

18. 3 courgettes

19. 6 potatoes (Named variety)

20. 6 pods broad beans

21. 6 pods peas (can be normal peas or mangetout)

22. 4 named herbs in jars

23. 4 onions

24. 6 hen’s eggs

Cookery.

25. A jar of chutney – min. weight 12 oz (350g)

26 A jar of marmalade – min. weight 12 oz (350g)

27. A jar of any jam – min. weight 12 oz (350g)

World War One Bake-Off

28. A loaf of bread, brown or white.

29. Any cake from a vintage recipe (labelled)

30. MEN ONLY: 4 biscuits (vintage recipe)

31. LADIES ONLY: 4 biscuits (vintage recipe)

Drinks.

32. A bottle of beer or cider

33. An alcoholic fruit drink

34. A non alcoholic fruit drink (standard 75 cl. wine bottle size)

Photography, Arts and Crafts

Max size – 7” x 5” – 17.5 cm x 12.5 cm, except where otherwise stated

35. Photograph, unmounted: ‘Water, water everywhere’

36. A set of four photos, b/w or colour, on any theme. Overall size max. A4.

37. Photograph, unmounted: ‘Architecture.’

38. Photograph, unmounted: ‘Make us smile’. Amusing, with caption.

39. A Postcard from Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, designed or drawn by the entrant.

40. A hand-knitted item.

41. Any piece of sewing.

42. Any other handicraft.

Junior Section.

Exhibits should be children’s unaided work.

9-12 year olds

43. A model of a football stadium (max. base size A3)

44. A mosaic

45. 4 jam tarts

5-8 year olds

46. A model of a football stadium (max. base size A3)

47. A mosaic

48. 4 jam tarts

Under fives

49. A painting or collage of a fruit or vegetable I have grown

50. A picture of my family

51 A toy made from recycled material

Allsorts Pre-School

Over the Easter break, you may have noticed cardboard eggs hanging around the village – they were part of the Allsorts Easter Egg Hunt. Families with preschool children set out to hunt down the eggs whenever it suited them over the Easter weekend. They then handed in their entry forms to go into a raffle to win a real chocolate egg.

Before the Easter weekend, the children made special biscuits, hot cross buns from salt dough, Easter bonnets, and cards. The children have also recently been having a lot of fun making mud pies and grass soup in the toy kitchen in the garden, splashing in puddles, trying out tennis, climbing trees and making dens. With the onset of spring, they have been looking at the lifecycles of frogs and butterflies, planting seeds, talking about baby animals, drawing tulip pictures, and making chocolate seed cakes.

Activities are also ramping up to prepare the children moving up to school in September. On a Tuesday morning, they are joining reception class at Brightwell School for weekly PE sessions. Older children from Brightwell School have been coming into Allsorts to read stories at lunchtime, and, in term 6, the Pre-School children will be going into school for their official settling in sessions. The children moving up are also practising their letters and numbers in small groups at Allsorts. It has become easier to split the children into groups now that the lobby has been cleared of cloakroom pegs, creating more space for a quiet break-out area.

The cloakroom pegs were moved to the decking during a gardening working party when family members and staff sorted out the garden areas and did odd jobs. Thank you to everyone who came along, including the WI. The garden looks much smarter, and the peg move makes drop-off and pick-up times less of a squeeze.

Families and carers also got together in March for a social event – a lunchtime picnic when adults were invited to join the children for lunch and a chat with each other. Thank you to the staff and everyone who came along and made it a success.

Our next social event is a fundraising pub quiz, and is open to anybody whether connected or not to the Pre-School. Allsorts will be running the Quiz Night at the Red Lion pub on Monday 9 June, by kind permission of the landlord, Mark. Money raised from entry fees to the quiz and a raffle will go towards Allsorts’ project to revamp the garden.

Allsorts will also have a stall at the Village Fete on Saturday 5 July, as well as holding its own sports day in July, including a raffle. If any local businesses are able to offer prizes for the raffle, we would be very grateful.

If you are able to donate prizes, or are interested in your child coming to Allsorts next (academic) year, please phone 826387 or email allsortsadmin@btinternet.com.

Team Allsorts

Environment Group

What happens to our waste?

Have you noticed the five tall, green, odd-shaped buildings alongside the road from Crowmarsh to Benson? The Environment Group visited the site one afternoon in April. The buildings belong to Agrivert and are an anaerobic digestion facility that treats our food waste under a contract with the County Council. Some 20,000 tonnes of waste is processed annually, being macerated and then digested to produce biogas and a liquid fertilizer over a period of 85 days. The biogas is burned in 2 gas engines which generate enough electricity to supply 4800 homes: the liquid is spread on local farmland. The plant was designed to be low in energy consumption. It uses rainwater and was built largely of recycled material. It employs waste heat from the engines in the digestion and pasteurisation process. Among its other environmental benefits are: the diversion of food waste from landfill, it captures 4.5 million tonnes of methane which would otherwise be released to the atmosphere and the nutrient rich fertilizer replaces fossil fuel derived fertilizer. Garden waste is also processed at the site.

Annual Meeting

This took place on 25 March when the chairman reported on the year’s activities, the accounts were presented and the committee and officers were elected. The guest speaker was Oliver Cripps from the North Wessex Downs AONB who talked about “Landscape in Peril”.

Photo-voltaic Survey.

The members of the Group are conducting a survey of the exiting PV installations in the Parish, a number approaching 20 at the present time. The idea is to record the benefits and any problems which may have arisen, in order to promote a greater number of parishioners to invest in photo-voltaic panels.

John Rodda

Mary Tabor – local writer and one of Dr Bach’s team of workers

In 1934 Dr Edward Bach moved to Sotwell and rented Mount Vernon in Bakers Lane. The family who owned Mount Vernon also owned the nearby property of Wellsprings. Perhaps through this connection, Dr Bach got to know a local lady who lived at Wellsprings, Mary Tabor.

Mary soon became part of Dr Bach's small team of assistants, working alongside Nora Weeks, who lived at Mount Vernon, and Victor Bullen, a Cromer man who had rooms in Abingdon. Bach himself saw patients mainly at Mount Vernon, but many of his letters from this period were sent from Wellsprings.

Bach died in 1936. Shortly before that Nora, Victor and Mary wrote separately to his publishers in London to introduce themselves as "Dr Bach's team of workers" who would be continuing things after he died. And in 1938 Mary published a novel with Bach's publishers, based on her memories of Bach and his spiritual beliefs. Called "To Thine Own Self", it included recognisable descriptions of both houses as well as a pub interior that might well be based on the Red Lion or the Bell (once at the end of Bell Lane) - both favourite pubs of Bach's.

But some time during the Second World War, Mary seems to have left the village. By the time the war was over and Nora and Victor were picking up the reins at Mount Vernon, Wellsprings had other tenants and Mary was no longer involved.

We have often wondered what became of her. Do any readers have any memories of a Mary Tabor living in Wellsprings in the 1930s and 1940s? We would love to know.

As for the novel, it was out of print for many years. But earlier this year we prepared a free online edition that can be downloaded from www.bachcentre.com. As a work of fiction, it's very much of its time, but anyone interested in local history might want to browse it and try to work out which local places inspired some of the locations.

Stefan Ball

BCSKMTC – Kings Meadow Tennis Club

On Sunday 4 May the first BCSKMTC Open Day was held at the Kings Meadow Tennis Courts. The sun shone, tennis was played by all ages and the club’s dedicated LTA Community Tennis Association (CTA) Coach, Tony Galante provided taster sessions for the juniors.

Visitors were provided with a BBQ, Bar, Ice Cream Sales and Tombola. Many thanks to the BCSKMTC Committee Members for a magnificent team effort - Rosemary Pinfield, Helen Satchell, Sarah Wintle who prepared and served the food, and Tomi Satchell for being the chef; Jeremy Whetter for running the bar assisted by our president Trevor Wintle; and Sophie and Andrew Smith who ran the Tombola and ice cream stall.

The ballot for two pairs of Wimbledon tickets, allocated to the club this year, were drawn by John Rodda, who was the main person responsible for starting the tennis club in the village and building the all-weather courts back in1980. The winners of the Centre Court and Court No I Tickets were, James Barringer and Simon Glendinning.

The club membership now stands at 131 including 35 juniors (9 to 16) and 16 mini members (3 to 8) Years. From this membership ,101 are signed up as members of Britain LTA. The club target is to have 150 members registered with the LTA by January 2015 which should result in an allocation of at least 10 pairs of Wimbledon Tickets in 2015.

Club Sessions - on a Tuesday and Thursday evening, 7pm to Dusk plus Sunday morning 9 to 12 noon - enable members and guests to play and make good use of the courts, refurbished by the BCS Parish Council last year. New members wishing to register and pay their subscription can do so online at Web Site at our http://www.bcskingsmeadowtennisclub.org.uk/ and register also with the LTA at http://www.lta.org.uk/.

BCSKMTC is running a 100 Ticket Draw to raise funds for a new Club House to be located on the Kings Meadow Tennis Courts with a built in toilet. With these facilities, tennis camps can be run by the CTA at Kings Meadow during the school summer holidays – tickets are £10 each with a 1st prize of £100, 2nd of £75 and 3rd of £50. Please contact Tony Windsor, Chairman on tony@bcskingsmeadowtennisclub.org.uk or 07909 848098 to participate in the draw or ask any questions about the club and it activities.

Tony Windsor

The Village Stores

I can’t believe summer is here. The shop feels incredibly summery, the ice cream trolley is well stocked, cans of Pimms are on the shelf and Christmas stock is being ordered…..yes you read right, Christmas. While you are thinking of hot summer evenings, I am thinking of hot chocolate and tree decorations! But for you to be able to enjoy all the wonderful produce and products that we stock, we have to be ahead of the game. We pride ourselves on our fresh and innovative ideas - not many Village stores have the facility to top up olive oil and washing up liquid on tap, have coffee beans ground fresh on the spot and frozen food which you decided how much you take and need. It’s our unique and friendly service that keeps our loyal customers coming back.

New things to look out for……..

  • 3 for £10 on a selection of meat from Ray Park.
  • New gift range in store now.

Stephanie

WI

In April, WI members were joined by nine visitors to take part in the Great Food Debate. Our Facilitator for the evening was Philip Pritchard from the Earth Trust. After a general discussion on the topic including food waste, food miles and buying local, we were divided into 3 groups each with a different brief. One group considered what we could do as individuals, another what we could do as a WI and finally what influence we could have locally and internationally. We then all came together and a lively debate followed with suggestions as varied as making shopping lists, to eating seasonally, to paying more for our food, to lobbying governments. It was a most informative and thought-provoking evening.

As usual, there have also been various trips and activities in the past months and here are some members' views.

A visit to the London docklands: Members of the W.I who went on a tour of the docklands on Tuesday 29 April found the whole experience both interesting and informative in spite of the travel delay caused by a strike on the underground. Many were of the opinion that there was more to see and would enjoy another trip – Veronica

Garden visit to the Lambourn area: In the second of our annual garden visits this year, arranged by Marion Symes, we had a marvellous day in the Berkshire downs at Rooksnest in the morning and Inholmes in the afternoon, with the lunch break in-between spent in the garden of an excellent pub, The Hare. The gardens were open under the NGS scheme and the weather, being all that one could wish for, added to the enjoyment in wandering at leisure in one of the most immaculate and beautiful private gardens seen in a long time. The gardens are open again in June if you want to see for yourselves - Margaret

Next meetings: in June we will hear about a place closer to home - Judy Gibbons will talk about the Donkey Sanctuary at Island Farm. In July, we deal with a subject which is of great concern as our population grows older and we live longer - Claire Abolins will speak about the work of Dementia Friends.

As you can see, there is always food for thought at our meetings!

Eastlyn Horsfield

Volunteering on the River Thames

Have you ever wanted to work on the river? Volunteers are needed to assist lock keepers along the Thames from Reading to Lechlade over the summer months. If you can commit to at least one day a week between May and September, like meeting people and want to learn more about the Thames, its wildlife and management, then contact the Volunteer team on 01491 828360 or email thames.volunteers@environment-agency.gov.uk to find out more and get an information pack and application form.

he Red Lion

New special offer – 15% discount on lunchtime menu for Brightwell senior residents (over 65 years), Mon-Fri only

Jazz Jam – first Monday every month

Monthly Quiz nights – usually last Monday of each month for local charity – next month there will be two: 2 June for Allsorts pre-School and 30 June for the Allotments

Open Mic night - next one is Sunday 15 June

Fish Friday specials for all food lovers – Choose from three different fish dishes each Friday evening.

To see more of What’s On at your local pub, the Red Lion, and to book, go to http://www.redlion.biz/ or tel 01491 837373.

Mark

News from The Earth Trust

The Earth Trust has started re-surfacing two main public rights of way in Little Wittenham Wood – from Church Meadow across to North Farm and the footpath running from the south of the wood which connects to the bridleway near Church Meadow (if you walk there with your dog like me you will know how terribly muddy they became – ed.). Parts of the wood are blocked off on weekdays unfortunately, but the paths should be open again in early June. They will be narrower but considerably improved.

Steven Wrigley, Warden at the Earth Trust, writes in his Spring Warden Diary: ‘…It has been good to see the kingfisher return to the banks of the Thames near Shillingford and the first swallows of the year have appeared overhead. It has been exciting to get to know the River of Life area again, with a previously very familiar area transformed with a myriad of backwaters, ponds and scrapes. Getting around has been interesting since routes that I have previously followed many times are now blocked by the new channels. It will be great to see these green up over time and also to be involved in the planting of reeds over the coming months. If you would like more information about our sites, email: steven.wrigley@earthtrust.org.uk.’

On Sunday 22 June, the Earth Trust will be holding a ‘Grow your own’ festival, a celebration of food and growing, activities will include growing some tasty salad and sampling lovely local food, 11-4pm, at Earth Trust Centre, Little Wittenham, Price £5 adults, £2 children. For more details see www.earthtrust.org.uk.