Wythall Community ~ Newsletter ~ Issue 93 - February 2020 Wythall Community Association www.wythall-park.org.uk 1 2 Newsletter No. 93 - February 2020 With thanks to the volunteers of Wythall Community Association who compile, produce and distribute 4,750 copies of this newsletter, free of charge, to nearly all the houses in Wythall Parish. For friends who do not receive a copy at home, they are also available in the library and at Wythall Park. (Park Hall, Wythall House and Wythall Community Club). It is funded by the Wythall Community Association. Editorial Welcome to the issue 93 of the Wythall Community Newsletter. It’s another bumper edition full of articles from organisations and clubs based in the Wythall and surrounding areas. As always, we need volunteers to deliver the newsletter to residents in the Wythall area, we also need volunteers to help run the annual bonfire event. If you feel you can help in any way, please contact the editor at the email address below. John Attwood - Editor Copy for next issue. Edited and Produced by: John Attwood Will all correspondents and contributors please supply copy for the next issue by Published by: Monday 6th July 2020 at the latest. Max Wythall Community Association of 450 words. (Registered Charity No. 243332) Please send all copy preferably electronically, as plain text, within an Distributed by: e-mail with photos or logos as Wythall Community Association attachments, or on a CD to Wythall Volunteers Community Association at Wythall House. www.wythall-park.org.uk Photos should have a minimum resolution of 600 pixels per inch. Front cover photo supplied by: Geraldine Kent The email address is [email protected] 3 Wythall Community Association Welcome again to Wythall Community Newsletter, produced by Wythall Community Association which is a registered charity here to run the 37 acre private park, Wythall Park, on Silver Street. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering whether the park will ever dry out again. We don’t have the best ground for drainage, but I don’t remember seeing it this bad. Here’s to a warm; dry summer! We have had some great support since the last newsletter towards funding. I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who booked to have their Christmas tree collected for a donation of £10, we raised very welcome funds, which will help the running of the park greatly. We also had brilliant support for our first attempt a providing a pantomime. It was a bit nerve racking organising it as you always worry when people are spending their hard earned cash whether they will have a good time, but judging by the noise from the audience (kids and adults), both the jesters and pantomime went down really well. We sold over £1,000 of tickets so made another welcome contribution to the running of the park. We also had our main fundraiser, bonfire night, but the weather wasn’t kind to us this year, so attendance and funds were both down. The mascots and Punch and Judy were great hits again with the crowd so a big thank you to those that braved it and supported us. All contributions are welcome, whether it is attending our events or becoming a member. It is a private park and it takes a lot of money to keep it running. We are still looking at car park charging to ensure it is there for the future and we thank everyone for their feedback. We do need to raise funds from the community to keep it there for the community. Costs continue to increase, and we have additional maintenance costs following the upgrade of the toilets, playground and the installation of the trim track from section 106 monies and allocated by Bromsgrove Council. Running a 37 acre park and Park Hall, which is a community hall, is not cheap and whilst we really appreciate all the work the volunteers do, we still have to pay for grounds- men to keep the park tidy. While it is mainly the volunteers who maintain the equipment it still costs a lot in parts and running as it’s not the most modern of equipment. It also costs trying to keep the toilets open and clean!!!!! So to wrap up, a huge thank you to everyone who supported us in 2019 and we look forward to this and hopefully more in 2020. Have a wonderful summer and enjoy the park. Sharon - Secretary Wythall Community Association. 4 Wythall Community Club Yet again its happy new year time again. Following the recent survey it became apparent that quite a few people don’t understand how the organisations at Wythall work together. The charity, Wythall Community Association manages all the park and facilities. “Wythall Community Club” is just that. A social club and its main purpose in life is to provide a safe environment for socialising and recreation and to raise funds to help support the above Association - at present it raises in the order of £70k per annum. To do this we need the continued support of the members and the locals. As with ALL registered members clubs, it runs to a model set of rules, adapted to our constitution, and then lodged with the licensing authorities. These are not variable without reregistering the club. The Club in total is administered by the Club Committee. The Club pays a rent for the premises to Wythall Community Association. If you don’t know how to join then please come along to Wythall House and speak to one of the bar staff who will point out a committee member. If you have a suggestion for improving things in the club, again speak to a committee member. A number of replies from the survey suggested we should do more on the park and more for the children on the park, etc. but activities outside of the Club area, Wythall House and lawn, are the responsibility of the Association so we will pass those suggestions on. Unfortunately, we face quite a lot of criticism on social media about various aspects of the club, BUT, very rarely do we hear “How do we join and help?” The committee is under-strength and many members have served for too many years as we struggle to recruit younger members. The Club is still here, and strong, with some 1200 members. That still leaves space for other local residents to come along and enjoy our excellent beers or coffee if you prefer. So please be positive, here we are again, at the same point as last year, the club is run by the members, for the members, so if you feel like having an input , please talk to us, we need new young blood and ideas, but if you think that things happen overnight, well sorry, I am afraid that they don’t. Des Ashby - Club Chairman Wythallcommunityclub.org.uk 5 Bruce’s Story - Hello there and a belated Happy New year from me and everyone at the GSD Club. Do you know the Hippopotamus song? It was back to training last Sunday, no snow, but Dad was layering up ready for the cold and he put WELLIES on, he normally wears hiking boots, so I guessed something was up – yup, all the rain had turned the field into mud, really sticky mud. The big puddles were good fun for paddling in, but Dad nearly went on his bum when I got a bit excited pulling him towards my class – ooops, picture of me putting my brain ‘into gear’ rather smartly. So, do you know the song?? Mud, mud glorious mud. Still, never mind, just a bit of inconvenience, it’ll dry up soon and Reggie will be able to come back to training – poor fella, he hates mud. We had a fantastic Pirate themed fun day at training before Christmas – The games were great fun, especially as our owners got really competitive, lots of prizes to be won and we all got a goody bag to take home. The Animal House Rescue ladies were over the moon with our donations of food and other bits and pieces to help them look after some dogs and cats less fortunate than us and we gave the proceeds of the raffle to GSR Elite to help them look after some rescued GSDs. Trying to decide what to write this time I had a sudden, brilliant idea – ask my mates for their funny stories or experiences with their families over the holiday – we had some good replies: Monty said the Christmas tree really annoyed him, his Dad had put it right near his favourite spot – Ha Ha – every evening he said he jumped on his bean bag, flipped upside down and tried to take the tree out with his back paws, the tree moved sideways a bit each night, the decorations fell off and part of the tree folded up, he said he went a bit too far one night and decked the tree completely !!! Oh no Monty that’s so funny, I bet you were popular!! “Hello Bruce, Cooper here, my Christmas has been pretty dull really apart from my owners bought this new big tree thing and decided to put shiny things all over it, every time I went near the thing they all started screaming at me, so I kept going near it and they kept screaming. Some of the balls on the big tree thing were rubbish they didn’t squeak when I tried to chew them, but my family did, really loudly, apart from that, like I said rather a dull Christmas really” “ Bruce, it was just before Christmas, coming back from the park with my short sighted mum, minding our own business, when, a gang of cats appeared, naturally I was on full cat alert pulling my mum for all I was worth, her arm nearly coming out of its socket, the cats just froze, no movement! When we got 6 up close - I realised it was actually a sleigh with reindeer, so of course I styled it out pretending I knew all along it was just a Christmas decoration, hopefully mum didn’t cotton on to my mistake but she must have had a sore shoulder.