Yarcombe Voices

Yarcombe Voices

Yarcombe Voices ISSUE No. ONE HUNDRED and NINETY-ONE PRICE 60p APRIL 2016 E D I T O R I A L away at the time - suggested we would be walking around in space suits and popping vitamin and protein pills instead of When I was a child my parents' favourite pub was The Old cooking meals. So, one wonders, what will life be like in Schoolhouse in a village called Ockley in Surrey. The pub 2036; or more specifically, 'How do you envisage Yarcombe was known far and wide and there was scarcely ever a dull in 20 years' time?' That is the theme of the Friday Forum night. Tom, huge, genial, welcoming, sporting a massive takingplaceatGlebeFarmonApril1st,startingasusualwith handlebar moustache, presided over the bar. Peggy, his sandwiches at midday. Skittles, surely, will still be as much plump, cheerful wife, cooked up a storm in the kitchen, and a part of Yarcombe life in twenty years' time as they are now. Josétheheadwaiterkeptdinersentertainedwithahilarious Anyone keen to play is welcome to join the Tuesday Club at streamofjokesandantics. WhenIreachedmyteenageyears afriendlyskittleseveningwithSmeatharpeWIonApril19th IwassometimesincludedinaSaturdaynightpartyandhave at The Sidmouth Arms, Upottery. fond memories of firelight and warmth, simple but superb food, the bar crowded, the restaurant packed. Usually the Do you 'make do and mend' or throw things away once actor Oliver Reed, who lived nearby, arrived at some point. they're slightly worn and buy new? Monty Don, the Leaving his Rolls Royce parked haphazardly on the village Gardeners'Worldpresenter,wasmovingoneofhisfavourite green he'd lurch - he really did lurch - into the pub, wave a garden ornaments, a Cretan oil jar, when it slipped from his greeting to my parents (he had worked with my father on grasp smashing into fragments; fortunately he found several films) and fall onto a stool at the bar. The noise level someone who painstakingly stuck the pot together again. would steadily increase over the next couple of hours until There was considerable public interest in a recent press Reed's butler would walk through the door, and after some report that The Queen sent a handbag, in use for over sixty persuasion steer the by now near-paralytic Reed outside years, to be repaired; many people failed to comprehend and drive off with him in the Rolls Royce. why she didn't simply throw it away, others were quietly pleased that Her Majesty shared their own thrifty ways. In It was fun. Then one day Tom had a heart attack which our relentlessly materialistic society repairing instead of forced his and Peggy's retirement, and though a new throwing away is slowly coming back into fashion: there are publican arrived it wasn't the same, trade dwindled, locals now over 1000 Repair Cafés around the world from an idea took their custom elsewhere. It's a familar story; those of that sprang to life in Amsterdam in 2009. A Repair Café is a you newer to this village may not be aware that The meeting place, organised by local people, where your Yarcombe Inn used to be one of the most successful broken items can be repaired by volunteers, the objective hostelries for miles around. But now we have the PubHub being to 'reduce waste, maintain repairing knowledge and and its immediate popularity proves that a community strengthen social cohesion'. Buttons come off your coat? meetingplacesuchasthisneedstobeanessentialpartofour Someone will sew them back on. The plan is to set up a village into the future. You can find out more about the Repair Café in this Parish and you can find out more about progress of the PubHub on pages 8 and 9; meanwhile, don't the idea in this issue of Yarcombe Voices and at the stand at miss the next PubHub night on Friday April 29th. Bacon Yarcombe Market on Saturday 9th April. sandwiches from 7.30p.m., darts, table football, dominoes, evenshovehalfpennyifanyonecanfindoutwheretheboard Miranda Gudenian. that used to be in The Yarcombe Inn is hiding! George Orwell's novel 1984 prompted endless speculation about how life would actually be in 1984. One newspaper article in the Sixties - 1984 seemed light years 1 IN THE COUNTRY THE ARRIVAL OF CALLAN AND LONELY It was early in the year, a beautiful sunny morning with a thick frost and the air was so cold you could see your breath on it. I knew this because I could see Harry through my bedroom window, his cold breath giving the impression that he was a headless body walking across the back field. I could hear Mum and Dad lighting the Rayburn and knew I would have to get up from the comforting warmth of my blankets. My job was to go to the farm and collect the milk for breakfast before Dad started banging on the ceiling for me to get moving! Dad now shouted: ”Christine!”... Oh no! I knew I was in trouble when Dad used my full name. I quickly pulled on my jumper and jeans then glanced at my watch, I wasn’t late so it couldn’t be that. Again Dad’s voice came bellowing up the stairs. ”Is this anything to do with you, young lady?” Nodoubtnow,Iwasinbigtrouble-whateveritwas. IalmostfelldownthestairsinmyhurrynottoexasperateDadfurther. My eyes followed to where Dad’s finger was pointing. There at the door sat huddled together were two of the cutest little kittens you had ever seen. They were squeezing into the corner of our porch sheltering from the bitter cold of the night before. The white cat had black tips on his ears and tail and the kind of piercing blue eyes that could cut straight through sheet steel! The other kitten was the negative of the first: it had a black body and white ear tips and was much smaller. When I went up to the farm I told Harry about our visitors. Harry said that the day before two of the lads from the village had come to clear the kittens out of the barn as the farm was being overrun by feral cats. These two had obviously made a run for it. When I told mum this she agreed that we could keep the cats until the cold weather had passed. Dad having been married to Mum for twenty years knew it was always best to just go along with whatever she decided. What about names? "How about Positive and Negative?" I piped up. “No,” Mum said, "let’s wait until we’ve got to know them better." As usual Mum was right and as time went by we all realised that the small black cat had difficulty cleaning himself. He was a smelly little thing and one night decided that it was too cold to go outside, so finding Dad’s slippers he decided to relieve himself in them. The following morning the white cat looked from Dad to the black cat as if to say, ”It wasn’t me, he’s just a bad kitty.” Luckily for the kittens Dad didn’t actually put the slippers on, but from that day onward the bad black cat was called Lonely as no-one wanted to get too close to him. ThosewhohadatelevisioninthelateSixtieswillknowwhywehadnochoice but to name Lonely’s partner in crime Callan. From time to time over the years Callan would arrive at our door with another half- drowned kitten. We re-homed these kittens with family and friends. By now Callan’s reputation was growing, he was often seen walking over the fields with another saved kitten dangling from his mouth. The local farmers tried to say that Callan was the equivalent of a feline cannibal. But maybe they really knew what Callan was up to and just could not face the fact that every year they were outwitted by a white cat with black tips to his ears and tail! Christine Howard. YARCOMBE WEATHER ~ FEBRUARY 2016 2016 2015 2014 Av. Max. temp. 8.4°C 8.0°C 8.8°C Av. Min. temp. 3.2°C 2.8°C 4.0°C Av. Overall temp. 5.8°C 5.4°C 6.4°C Rainfall 136.1 mm 68.3 mm 268.9 mm Wettest Day 6th 36.2 mm 22nd 16.0 mm 4th 33.8 mm Sunniest Day 15th 9.0 hrs approx. 21st 9.5 hrs 16th 8.5 hrs Warmest Day 1st 14.3°C 25th 13.4°C 18th 11.4°C Coldest Night 16th -2.2°C 2nd -1.8°C 14th -0.1°C Sunshine hours 83.0 hrs. approx. 104.0 hrs 97.0 hrs On Friday 5th February a blanket of stratus cloud rolled in from the south west, the pressure fell, heavy rain fell, isobars tightened and Storm Henry blew across the South West dropping 57.6mm of rain in two days. After one hour of sunshine on Sunday 7th February, Storm Imogen arrived with tighter isobars, creating much stronger winds but this time only a little light rain fell. The new system of naming storms has generated plenty of attention, although it was thought up in Victorian times by Clement Wragge. Born in the UK he emigrated to Australia where he started the country's national storm-warning service. Page 2 In 1887 he began naming storms in his forecasts using the Greek alphabet, before progressing to South Island female names. In 1902 he started naming storms after politicians, particularly the ones that he had a grudge against, describing how the politicians were "causing great distress" or "wandering aimlessly about the Pacific". He soon left under a cloud! - and emigrated to New Zealand. During the Second World War, the US military forecasters used names of their wives or girlfriends for tropical cyclones.

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