We welcome a new classifieds section. SUMMER BALL Only £5 for 35 words. Please support us. More volunteers required for the Helmdon Parish Plan. See www.helmdon.com for details. New Reading Room Working Committee Secretary required. Use it or lose it! – Helmdon Post Office and drop in Centre. Also some volunteers Over £5000 raised are required to keep the drop in centre (see HYHO article) running. The Helmdon carnival is one of the pillars New Daily (Mon – Sat) Bus service of the village calendar and is a large part of to Banbury started in September our communities reputation throughout the (SMS 508) Finally makes going to county. To continue, it needs the support of work in Banbury by bus realistic many fun loving committee members. and massively improves our Please step forward now to participate in shopping access to Banbury. As the organisation of next years carnival and ever prove to the council that it is contribute to the continued success of this useful by using it or never moan wonderful event. New people and new about bus services or Banbury ideas are always welcome. Contact any parking spaces ever again !! committee member for dates of the next meeting. Talkabout “Opt Out” – Please let us know Talkabout magazine is now taking if you no longer want to receive copies of commercial advertising to support the magazine. An email or a quick call to printing costs. Please contact Wilf the contacts below will remove you from Forgham (760680) if you would the delivery list and save the village £1 a like to advertise in the next issue. copy and a lot of work. We have advertiser and contributor Distribution : 530 copies guides available now. Please contact the editors if you would like Non-Resident Price £2 a copy or see www.helmdon.com Published Sept- 1 –2004 – Issue 38 www.helmdon.com your community website ◊ Richard Wray ◊ Editor 01295 768508 [email protected] Private Hire – To All British & European Destinations Tailor Made Group Tours And Excursions Extensive Tour Program For Holidays And Excursions For Individuals Educational Trips Theatre Trips & Concerts Corporate Hire Special Interest Excursions or Events Whether you require coach only or the total package Jeffs Coaches have experienced personnel to handle your enquiry. From itinerary planning to venue suggestions, just call or email your one stop transport and travel company. 01295 768292 email: [email protected] website: www.jeffscoaches.com - 2 – www.helmdon.com your community website Commercial Advertisement Table of Contents Editors Letter 4 1st Helmdon Rainbows 35 Classified Adverts 6 Community Notice 35 Helmdon Acorns Pre-School 36 PARISH NEWS The WEA 37 The Helmdon Village Web Site 38 Parish Council News 9 Reaching you soon 39 Helmdon Primary School 10 Helmdon Parish Plan 12 ANNOUNCEMENTS Helmdon Reading Room 14 Helmdon’s Broadband Campaign 15 Obituaries, Marriages & Births 41 Health Provision 16 Obituaries 41 Marriages 41 CHURCH NEWS Births 41 Baptist Church – Tove Valley Baptist REFERENCE LIBRARY Fellowship 17 Tiny Tots 17 Our Local Elected Representatives 42 Holiday Club 17 Fire Brigade 42 Astwell Group Mothers Union 19 Voluntary Work 42 The Friends of Helmdon Churchyard 19 Hospitals & Doctors 43 Rector’s Ramblings 20 Police 43 CKers Youth Club 22 Support Groups / Advice Lines 44 Our Twelfth Supper Meeting 22 Local Authorities & Services 45 The Friends of St Mary Magdalene 22 Sports 46 Transport 46 READERS ARTICLES Village Contacts 46 Services 46 PLEASE….. 24 Misc 46 The Mite Scheme (UNICEF UK) 24 Direct Phone Numbers for Council Services 47 GROUP NEWS Village Information 47 Bus Timetables 49 Helmdon Fellowship 25 Helmdon Sports Club 26 Helmdon Bridge Players 27 Helmdon W.I. 27 Neighbourhood Watch 28 Lunches 29 South Northants Volunteer Bureau 29 Helmdon Womens club 30 Helmdon Young Husbands Organisation 31 Post Office & Drop-In-Centre 34 The Helmdon Carnival Committee 34 – 3 – www.helmdon.com your community website The views, comments and facts portrayed in this magazine are NOT necessarily those held by the Parish Council. This magazine is produced for the benefit of the residents of Helmdon Parish and is sponsored by the Parish Council. Its articles and comments however are from the credited individuals and organisations that choose to write to the editor for inclusion in the magazine. EDITORS LETTER Dear readers, Welcome again to YOUR village magazine. I do hope you enjoy the content of the magazine and chose to act upon the many and various calls for help and support contained within it. The village is embarking on many new campaigns led by the “Helmdon Parish Plan” which is proving to be a great rallying call for the village to get up and chose its own future. But please don’t forget our more simple pleas for help at the churchyard or with the teas at the drop in centre which have potentially less appeal but are still a vital part of the workings of our community. The post office is in fact another good example of a service that the village used to have as a permanent facility and now relies on the good will of our neighbouring village post office, Wappenham. If it doesn’t get enough use then we will lose even this facility. This is a vital service, particularly to the elderly in the community, but if we don’t use it we will lose it. It would be great if everyone could make just one effort to visit it in the next 6 months to see what a difference it can make (Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons in the reading room). I look forward to reporting back to you in this in the next issue. I have been stricter this issue with deadlines and reminders to contributors simply through lack of time on my part. Hopefully the fact that I have fixed deadlines for each issue will gain momentum in the community to a point where reminders are no longer necessary (yeah right and the winning loto numbers next week are my telephone number!). Until then I give a big thanks to those who were able to meet this issue deadline and hope to catch up with everyone in the next issue. Deadline for contributions to the next issue is : Feb 22nd, however anything provided before that date helps us enormously with pacing out the workload of preparing the copy. The Helmdon web site has now kindly created a section for the magazine, giving you the editorial guidelines of the magazines and allowing you to download “contributor” and “advertiser” mini- guides. Please have a browse and get involved with your village magazine. http://www.helmdon.com/talkabout/index.htm or simply go to www.helmdon.com and click on the link under “village life”. The site also allows those of you with patience or broadband Internet connections (files are in the multi-megabytes size) to download the magazine in electronic copy. This brings me neatly on to “opt out”. The magazine is a costly publication to print and it would be a real shame to think that all the effort of getting the advertising support to print the magazine was being thrown in the bin. So if this is what happens in your household, could you make a one off contribution to the village community by letting me know that you would rather “opt out”. I can then remove your from the delivery list and print fewer copies. (This assumes that these households get as far as reading this ☺ ). Please call or email me using the contacts on the front of the magazine. The second reason you might want to opt out is because you are happy to download the magazine from the web site and read it on screen or print out your own copy. This has only just become – 4 – www.helmdon.com your community website realistic since the village can now have broadband Internet connections thanks to our broadband campaign. A thank you again to the team of deliverers who give up their own time to deliver the 400+ copies of the magazine to all the houses in the Parish. If you do find that you are reading someone else’s copy because you did not get a delivery, please call us and we will gladly drop a copy round and update our delivery list. Also on this note I did not get any volunteers to deliver the magazine to those properties along the Astwell track (I called for help in the last issue due to the condition of the road to these properties). So with the kind agreement of Bungalow Stores I will be leaving your copies there for collection in the future and will provide one last postal or hand delivery for those properties for this issue. These are the properties involved: Astwell Castle Farm House, Astwell Castle Farm Flat, No.1 Astwell Castle Cottages, No.2 Astwell Castle Cottages, No.3 Astwell Castle Cottages, Astwell Park Farm, Astwell Park Bungalow, Astwell Park Barn, New House Near Astwell Park Bungalow, New Astwell Park Bungalow, Astwell New Park Farm, Old Park Farm, Astwell Mill. If your copies are not collected then I will assume that you want to be on the “opt out” list. My final thanks goes to Bungalow Stores who have been selling the magazine for us at £2 per copy and so far have sold over 10 copies. If you need additional copies of this issue or the last issue please pop down and see them, they will have 10 or so copies for sale. ◊ Richard ◊ Editor: Talkabout Magazine 01295 768508 [email protected] – 5 – www.helmdon.com your community website CLASSIFIED ADVERTS For high quality: Computer Problems? ********************** ☼ Personal Tuition ☼ # Kitchen fitting ☼ Virus Fixes ☼ # Bathroom fitting ☼Maintenance ☼ Liz Linford # Carpentry ☼ Broadband Set-up ☼ * Chiropractor * # Tiling ☼ Web Design ☼ # Decorating ☼ Repairs & Upgrades ☼ * Therapeutic