February 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter in The Fens

So moping flat and low our valleys lie,

So dull and muggy is our winter sky,

Drizzling from day to day with threats of rain,

And when that falls still threatening on again;

From one wet week so great an ocean flows,

That every village to an island grows,

Yet in a little close, however keen

The winter comes, I find a patch of green,

 Where robins, By the miser winter made Domestic,

flirt and perch upon the spade; And in a little garden-close at home

I watch for spring-and there's the crocus come!

 

                                                                                                                 John Clare

 

 

Magazine for Falfield, Oldbury

Rockhampton & Shepperdine.

 

EDITOR                     Mrs Maureen Bland.

                                    Little Green Cottage, Ham, Berkeley, Glos. GL13 9QN

                                    Tel: 01453 811004

 

PRINTED BY             Oldbury Deckers. Tel: 01454  412153

 

4-ward is an independent community magazine

and material is published at the discretion of the editor.

 

Articles for next month's edition should reach the Editor

or Email 4ward@oos4ward.plus.com

 

NO LATER THAN 10th OF THIS MONTH

 

4-ward Magazine Advertising Charges

 

            Back Cover    Whole page - £20        Half page - £10            Quarter page - £5

            Inside Pages    Whole page - £16        Half page - £8  Quarter page - £4

10% discount on all charges when paying for full year in advance.

Cheques should be made payable to “4-ward Magazine”

 

Church Contacts :-    

 

Thornbury & Oldbury.

                        Parish office                            281900            Wed. Thurs. Fri. mornings

                        Revd David Primrose               413209

Methodist         Rev Iesinga Vunipola              412269

 

            Rockhampton, Falfield, Tortworth, Tytherington & Cromhall

                        Revd Canon Pat Lyes-Wilsdon            294767

 

Christ The King Thornbury.

Father Alex                              412223

 

Local Village Web Links        www.oldbury-on-severn.com    www.falfield.org.uk

            www.MyThornbury.com

 

Oldbury Memorial Hall – contact Len Hales 415144

Oldbury Youth Club 07831 849742

 

 

 

 

 

 


2008 CALENDAR DATES  FOR OLDBURY

Sponsored by Ian Knapp Builders.

 

5th        Feb      Tue      AGM and Management Meeting, Memorial Hall

6th        Feb      Wed     Oldbury Sequence Dancing

16th      Feb      Sat       Oldbury Sequence Dancing

5th        Mar      Wed     Oldbury Sequence Dancing

8th        Mar      Sat       Race Night, Memorial Hall

15th      Mar      Sat       Oldbury Sequence Dancing

2nd        Mar      Wed     Oldbury Sequence Dancing

19th      Mar      Sat       Oldbury Sequence Dancing

10th      May     Sat       Oldbury Quiet Day - Chapel

15th      June     Sun      Fun Run

                                    Songs of Praise 6.00pm The Pound

5th        July      Sat       Cricket Club Summer Do

12th      July      Sat       Oldbury Church Fete 2pm Naite Farm

13th      Sept     Sat       Oldbury Church Harvest Barn Dance Naite Farm

 

Coffee mornings are held at the chapel on the 3rd Saturday of each month in aid of charity.

A community library will be held in the Oldbury Chapel School Room on the 1st & 3rd Thursdays of each month 11.00 – 12.00 noon. Everybody is welcome to come along for a chat and a cup of coffee.

 

If you have any more fund raising or social events you would like to include in this diary, please contact Ian Knapp on 419332

 

Oldbury Deckers meet in the pavilion, West Marsh Lane-

Friday              5.00pm – 10.00pm

The contact number at club is 07831 849742

If unavailable contact – Barry 07732 637246 or Bob 411506

 

 

 

Oldbury Deckers Youth Club

 

The Club will be closed on Friday March 7th and also Friday March 21st Good Friday. The club will be open as normal during the April School Holidays.

 

 

The Saturday night thing

Saturday February 9th

7pm – 9pm

 

This month’s Theme :   

" Kindness"

 

Come and join us!

At the Chapel

(open to 11 – 15 year olds)

 

“The cost for each session is £2.  This is to cover the cost of the craft

(which has turned out to be really popular) and also to cover other running costs.

   Thank you!”

 

For more information contact Lucienne 416149

 

 

 

Flower Clubs

 

THORNBURY & DISTRICT

SEVERN VALE

Meetings at Thornbury Methodist Church Hall

2nd & 4th Thursdays

Demonstrations and Practice Classes at 7.30pm

Meetings at Armstrong Complex, Thornbury

Demonstrations

3rd  Wednesday in the Month

at 2.00pm

14th February           

       Talk

28th February           

       A.G.M.

February 13th 10.30am

   ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING &

   Lunch followed by

Pam Lewis (Nat. Dem) 'Forging Ahead'

   Comp – 'February brings the Snow'

February 25th

   Practice - 'Green and White'

 

 

 

`GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEARS'

THORNBURY MUSICAL THEATRE GROUP

 

The Thornbury Musical Theatre Group will be celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2008. Our first production is the pantomime `Goldilocks and the Three Bears' which has been written by one of our members, Gary Kennedy. This very amusing adaptation of the age old fairy story will be performed at the Armstrong Hall in Thornbury from Tuesday 19 to Saturday 23 February 2008.

The pantomime tells of a young girl, Goldilocks, who gets lost on a walk in the woods. She comes across a lovely little cottage but no one is at home, only three bowls of porridge on the table, three chairs round the table and three beds. She tries all three in turn and eventually falls fast asleep. The three bears return, wondering who has eaten the porridge, broken the chair and slept in their beds. Naturally, like all good fairy stories, there is a happy ending as Goldilocks and the Three Bears become good friends.

This is good wholesome family entertainment for young and old and if your children don't know the story, they certainly will by the end of the performance!

Performances are 7.15 pm nightly and there will also be a matinee at 2.15 pm on Friday 22 and Saturday 23 February. Tickets are £8.50 for adults and £7.50 concessions. A family ticket for 4 (one adult and three children or two adults and two children) is £28, available on Tuesday and Wednesday nights only. For block bookings of 15 or more we are offering a £0.50 reduction.

Ticket enquiries can be made to 01454 415850. Look out for further details in next month's issue.

 

 

 

Thornbury Musical Theatre Group - 40th anniversary year plea

CALLING EX-THEATRE GROUP MEMBERS

 

The Thornbury Musical Theatre Group (formerly Thornbury Amateur Operatic Society) is delighted to be celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

 

This is a plea for all ex members to make contact with us regarding the celebrations.  Please ring Karen on 01454 853947 to find out more.

 

 

 

 

 

Oldbury Church Flowers

           

February          3rd        Mrs Harding

                        10th      Lent – No Flowers

                        17th      Lent – No Flowers

                        24th      Lent – No Flowers

                       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FALFIELD VILLAGE HALL MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE

(Registered Charity No. 1041147)

 

ANNUAL QUIZ NIGHT

 

SATURDAY 2ND FEBRUARY 2008

7.30PM

IN FALFIELD VILLAGE HALL

 

£8 PER TABLE OF 4

 

TO BOOK A TABLE RING 01454 260364

 

REFRESHMENTS AVAILABLE

 

Proceeds to Falfield Village Hall

 

 

 

THORNBURY LIBRARY

 

1.         Extended opening hours

 

Funding from the Hortham Hospital development which was secured by South Gloucestershire Council under a planning agreement has enabled Thornbury Library to open an additional hour, the library will now open until 5.30 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday commencing 7th January 2007.

Commenting on the increase Cllr Heather Goddard, Executive Councillor for Communities said “This is a small step in the right direction, through opening later it will enable young people and people who work during the day greater access to the service”

Our new opening hours will be:

 

Monday   9.30 - 5.30

Tuesday 9.30 - 5.30

Wednesday 9.30 - 7.00

Thursday CLOSED

Friday 9.30 - 7.00

Saturday 9.30 - 5.00

2.         Premium DVDs

 

We have just introduced a new Premium DVD service. This includes the very latest DVDs which can be hired for £3.00 per week. Please note these DVDs cannot be renewed or reserved.

February titles include:

Rush hour 3, Knocked up, Bring it on –in it to win it, The Kingdom

 

3.         A good winter read

 

A final list of recommended books, this time from Thornbury Golf Reading Group.

 

Cloud atlas by David Mitchell

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

Night watch by Sarah Waters

To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee

Purple hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Girl with a pearl earring by Tracy Chevalier

The lovely bones Alice Sebold

All the detective agency series by Alexander McCall Smith

All the books by Anita Shreve

 

4.         Pre-school story time and rhyme time

 

We hold a weekly story time on Monday afternoons from 2.15pm-2.45pm and a monthly rhyme time for younger children on the last Monday of each month also from 2.15pm-2.45pm. Pre-school children and their parents and carers are most welcome to attend these free activities.

We also hold regular holiday activities. Contact the library for details.

 

5.         Home library service

 

If you enjoy reading but are housebound and unable to get to the library then our friendly home library service volunteers can bring books to you in your own home. Just give the library a ring or ask a relative or friend to contact us on your behalf.

We currently have a vacancy to join our small team of volunteers. Travel expenses are paid. Please contact the library for details.

 

For more information on any of the above items please give the library a ring on our new number 01454 868 006 (24 hour renewal line 08450 020 777) or visit our web-site on www.southglos.gov.uk/libraries.

Remember you can also access the web-site to renew your books, check the catalogue, reserve items and consult a wide range of on-line reference materials including Oxford English Dictionary Online; Oxford Reference Online; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; Grove Music Online; Grove Art Online. You will need your borrower number and pin number (available from the library). We have also added Ancestry.co.uk to the list but this is only available using the library computers. You can also join the library on-line. We also offer a telephone enquiry service on 01454 866 900 or you can email your enquiry to askthelibrary@southglos.gov.uk

            We also offer free internet access and word processing in the library.

Please note we can send your reservation and overdue notifications by text, email or voice message. Please ask!

 

PETER KAY´S UNIVERSAL TRUTHS

 

Despite constant warning, you have never met anybody who has had their

arm broken by a swan.

You´ve turned into your dad the day you put aside a thin piece of wood specifically to stir paint with.

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

 

“Riders for Health” rev.  up.

           

Oldbury residents who are entertained by our local carol singers and musicians each Christmas will know that we collect for a different charity each year. Often this is a West Country charity dear to our hearts so people have given generously to CLIC, John Grooms Homes or the new Children’s Hospice for instance. However , in 2005 we found a local link to a then little-known international charity operating in Africa.

We heard about it because a former choir boy at St Arilda’s, Craig Carey Clinch, (now public affairs director for the UK Motor-Cycle Industry Association), was undertaking a sponsored ride with his colleague, Dave French. This was no picnic! The men were waved off from the Birmingham Motor-Cycle Exhibition at the end of October that year on the first leg of a challenging journey. They rode to catch the Plymouth ferry to Santander in Spain and down through Morocco over the Atlas Mountains. They continued down, through territory still disputed  in the Western Sahara to Mauritania. A journey across the Sahara Desert followed to Banjul in the Gambia where they visited the “Riders for Health” facility before continuing to Kayes in Mali. Adventures and dangers   were also experienced on the return home on the motor-bikes in time for a family Christmas.

            The run was both to honour a friend and to raise the profile of “Riders for Health” and promote a new charity, “Motorcycle Outreach” which works in conjunction with Riders f.H. in Indonesia and Latin America. (Riders f.H. still concentrates on the huge health care needs of Africa.) The friend was Simon Milward, a humanitarian motor cyclist, who had been killed near Kayes earlier that year. Simon was raising money around the world to undertake work on the Indonesian island of Flores in Indonesia and his friends were determined to continue this project.

            So, what are both these charities about? They specialise in organising health care delivery where road communications are bad or non-existent. The vehicles used are sometimes 4-wheel drives or quad bikes but mainly motor cycles that can cover difficult terrain. The difficulty is that in any Third World country expensive vehicles can be donated but projects can soon fail due to lack of proper maintenance and spare parts when they break down. Both these charities, operating in different parts of the world, train health care workers to ride the bikes and how to maintain them at a basic level. They provide spare parts at cost price only – the Zero Breakdown arrangement.

            I was pleased to read in “The Times” on December 22nd that “Riders for Health” was one of  three chosen charities for their Christmas Appeal. A unique partnership has been set up by this charity, the Elton John Aids Foundation and the government of the small South African country of Lesotho. Hundreds of nurses and doctors should be mobile by the end of 2008 in a mammoth effort to stamp out HIV and tuberculosis there. They will also be able to deliver better health care to other sick or malnourished people and to pregnant mothers and babies who live miles from a clinic or hospital along a dirt track.

            Health workers learn to ride a Honda CTX200 and the basic maintenance required in an intensive 2 weeks of instruction. Essential to this method is taping up the throttle in the first instance to prevent the learners biting the dust! The very first lesson is on how to stop! The riders are trained on an old racecourse outside Maseru, the capital, in a programme designed   to cope with the difficult conditions of that country.

            One of the first learners was Mphu  Ramatlapeng, the new Health Minister. She is determined to radically improve health care in the tiny kingdom. She thought “having a go” herself would set a good example and show that “every woman can do it.”

            This project, in which Elton John’s Foundation will provide 120 bikes and Riders f.H. the teaching and maintenance, is a cause for regret as well as celebration. Riders f.H. ran a successful programme there in the 1990’s but the then Lesotho government decided the motorbikes were running so well that they didn’t need the cost-price maintenance programme. They cancelled it. Eventually the whole fleet was off the road and health staff confined once more to the clinics. This time everyone is determined to get it right.

            You can find out more on the internet at timesonline.co.uk/timesappeal. Meanwhile, back here in Kent, Craig and his wife Barbara are planning another marathon motor cycle ride into Africa. Watch this space...

 

Meg Adnams.

 

 

 


Oldbury Rain Fall

 

 

December 2007           December 2006           December 2005

98mm                          92mm                    41mm

3.86"                            3.62"                     1.61"

 

Total Rainfall for the following years

 

                        2007                            2006                            2005

                        902.24mm                   764.50mm                   464mm

                        35.76"                          30.09"                          25.43"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PEOPLE living in the Falfield and Oldbury areas are being offered the chance to have smoke alarms fitted in their homes by Avon Fire & Rescue Service (AF&RS) completely free of change.

Over the last 12 months local firefighters have been out and about visiting homes in the region to provide safety advice and install the lifesaving devices free of charge to anyone in the community. They are now inviting more residents in Falfield and Oldbury to sign up to a Home Fire Safety Visit (HFSV), which can be arranged over the phone, on the internet or via SMS text message.

A spokesperson for Avon Fire & Rescue Service said: “Fires can be devastating, not just to life, but also to property and possessions. They can spread so quickly if they are left unnoticed.  However, a smoke alarm can give you and your family an early warning sign that you could be in trouble.

“Our firefighters, or members of the Community Safety Team, carry out the visits at a time convenient to the caller and in their own home. During the visit they will run through all aspects of fire safety and will also fit free smoke alarms with a 10-year battery life. The use and maintenance of the alarms will also be explained.”

AF&RS’s Chief Fire Officer/Chief Executive, Kevin Pearson said: “Many people are at risk from fire in the home, from families with young children to older people living alone.  A fire can break out for many reasons, because people leave cooking unattended or fall asleep while smoking, because of an electrical fault in an item of household equipment, or because candles haven't been used safely.

“Unfortunately we attend house fires every year where a smoke alarm could have provided the occupiers with an early warning that they were in danger.  Even more upsetting is that in some cases a smoke alarm could have saved lives.  Our free Home Fire Safety Visits provide people with easy tips on how to stay safe from fire in the home and what to do if a fire does break out.”

The safety advice includes basic tips such as:   

•           Don’t overload plug sockets.

•           Make sure candles are placed in the correct holders, away from furnishings.

•           Do not leave cooking unattended.

•           Check the batteries in your smoke alarm and vacuum them to ensure dust is not blocking the sensor.

•           Make sure everyone in your home knows the escape route from your house, as well as where keys for windows and doors are kept.

Home Fire Safety Visits can be booked in one of three in three ways:

 

•           By calling freephone 0800 1693 999

•           By visiting Avon Fire & Rescue Service’s website at www.avonfire.gov.uk

•           Or by texting 07781 482 627 for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

 

 

 

 

 

Rockhampton Carol Singers

 

The Rockhampton Carol Singers would like to thank everyone again who gave so generously to us on our evening round Rockhampton

Our collection this year of £93.00 will go to The Grand Appeal ( Bristol Childrens Hospital ) this will be for Charlee Joanne George's tribute star, up till now her star has raised enough money to purchase a special stretcher for one of the ambulances to carry children.

Thankyou again for inviting us into your homes an