Gaydon Parish Magazine September 2022
Gaydon Gazette for August
Parish Council Tues 6th at 7.30pm Village Hall
Tai Chi Wednesdays at 7pm Village Hall
Coffee morning Sat 10th at 11am Village Hall
Craft Circle Suns 11th & 25th at 5pm St Giles' Church
Quiz Night Weds 28th at 8pm Malt Shovel Inn
Parish Council News
Next Meeting: The next meeting of the Parish Council will be held on Tuesday, 6th September, in the Village hall at 7.30pm. Please come along and share any concerns you may have; or you can contact the clerk at gaydonpc@gmail.com or by phone 07930 517811.
Coffee Morning
Saturday 10 September at 11am in the Village Hall. Bring and Buy, Books, Raffle; Coffee, Tea and biscuits 50p.
Do come along and meet your fellow-villagers!
Tai Chi
The Tai Chi group meets every Wednesday evening at 7 o'clock in the Village Hall. Please send a text message to 07514 011406 before your first time so that we can look out for you. From your second month onwards, please bring a coin to donate for hire of the Hall.
Gaydon Cake and Crafting Circle
Please join us in Church every second and fourth Sunday at 5pm when we gather over cake and tea and get creating. If you don't know how to knit or crochet, we can teach you; and You Tube is always a useful tutor! Pop into Church on the 11th or 25th of September after 5pm or get in touch with Jo Hotchkiss or Gilly Bolton.
Malt Shovel Quiz Night
Get your teams ready for the famous Malt Shovel Quiz on Wednesday 28 September at 8pm.
Still looking for the Top Brains of Gaydon!
Flag
The flag was flown on 23 August in honour of the joint Birthdays of Gaydon's famous Twins, Sue Wilkshire and Jane Bennett. Many Happy Returns of the Day! The flag on the 25th sent massive congratulations to Belle Walden for smashing her GCSE results; and to all the other young people in the village who got their results that day.
International Dog Day was celebrated on the 28th. If you have something to commemorate or celebrate, contact Siobhan Hannan on 07780 689582 and she will raise the flag for you.
Dates for your Diary
Harvest Festival:
Chadshunt Church, Sunday 9 October at 3pm. The sun will be starting to go down, so the candles will be lit to welcome everyone to a traditional service of Evening Prayer at the lovely old church of All Saints, Chadshunt.
Apple Day
The Millennium Group is planning to hold a small Apple Day Event in the Malt Shovel car park around the third week in October.
National Apple Day is Friday 21 October and we are waiting to finalise arrangements. More details to follow in the next Parish Magazine and on social media.
September Church Services Dassett Magna
4th
9.30am Morning Prayer Gaydon
10am Holy Communion Farnborough
11am Fenny Compton Morning Prayer
11am Holy Communion BCP Northend
11am Holy Communion BCP Burton Dassett
11th
9.30am Holy Communion Gaydon
11am Holy Communion Fenny Compton
11am Morning Prayer Northend
6pm Harvest Evening Prayer Farnborough
18th
9.30am Agape Service Gaydon
10am Holy Communion BCP Farnborough
11am Morning Prayer Fenny Compton
11am Holy Communion Burton Dassett
25th
9.30am Morning Prayer Northend
10am Morning Prayer Farnborough
10am Breakfast Food for Thought Fenny Compton Hall
6.30pm Songs of Praise Gaydon
Zoom Weekly Services Monday - Friday: 9.30am Morning Prayer; 6pm Evening Prayer
Roman Catholic Church of St Francis, Kineton: Sunday Mass 11am. www.stfrancis-kineton.co.uk
Allotment Notes for August
As the sole original allotment holder of some 10 years back I think I can safely conclude that we have never before experienced the drought conditions and high temperatures of this month.
Over the years we have managed to source 3 large water storage tanks - water was always an issue as there is no mains tap. The old sheds were renovated with corrugated iron roofs which fed rain water into the tanks, a system that up to now has been adequate. However, they are now all dry. Water needs to be wheelbarrowed up in large plastic containers, courtesy of the Malt Shovel!
Crop report:
Doing well in these mediterranean conditions are grape vines which have large ripening bunches: sweet corn is sizing up well; globe artichokes are a magnificent crop. I think potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes will do well next month, along with climbing beans and courgettes.
Holding their own are mature brassicas like purple kale but even the netting isn't deterring persistent cabbage white butterflies.
Not so good are lettuces bolting and other crops drying up.
Last month, the soft fruits like raspberries, currants and strawberries that missed the heat were also profuse croppers. Even weeds are suffering from the heat!
Crickets are chirping from the adjacent long grass; and grass-feeding species like meadow browns and gatekeepers drift in to feed on sweet pea and bean flowers. Let us hope for the predicted rain next week: the soil is rock hard and cracked in places, reminiscent of Spain. Bernard Price
Gaydon & District Horticultural Society
The Annual Flower Show on Saturday August 13th proved to be a success with Entries better than expected and the Stalls doing a good trade. The children were entertained during the afternoon by Clown Norman and a pleasant afternoon was spent by all.
The Members Cup was won by Mr Lines; the Open Cup by Mr A Liddington; the Rose Bowl by Mrs Mullis who also won the Tankard for Best Exhibit in show. A special Jubilee Floral Arrangement prize was won by Mrs Redgrave of Kineton. The special prize for Jubilee Collection of Vegetables was won by Mr D Cook of Ashorne. Best Children's Fancy Dress - John Gulliver of Northend. Miss Gaydon - Miss Marian Arnold of Whitnash. Winner of the cake was Mrs Brightman.
A small number of people came to the evening entertainment and we were pleased to welcome some non-members and new Gaydon residents. Dr Davies's competition kept people busily thinking and Mrs Phipps won the prize. The Gate prize was won by PC Cooper.
Extract from Gaydon with Chadshunt Parish Magazine, September 1977
September Memorial Book
1999 1st Phil Goodwin
1999 2nd Dawn Comben
2013 3rd William Arnold
1982 9th John Neal
2018 17th Rosemary Davies
1980 29th William Holder
2002 30th Rene Mann
If there is a special entry that you would like to see, let me know and I will try to make sure that the Book is open on that day. Julie Rickman
The Vicar's Letter
Dear Friends,
After the great fire of 1666 that levelled London, Christopher Wren was commissioned to re-build St Paul’s Cathedral. One day, Wren observed three bricklayers on a scaffold - one crouched, one half-standing and one standing tall, all hard at work.
Of the first bricklayer Wren asked, “What are you doing?” The bricklayer replied, “I’m working hard laying bricks to feed my family.” The second bricklayer responded, “I’m building a wall.” But the third bricklayer, the one who stood stall and the most productive of the three, replied with a gleam in his eye, “I’m building a great cathedral to
The Almighty.”
We all see life from our own perspective which may differ from others around us. We may all be doing a similar piece of work, be living similar lives but how we view what we are doing makes the greatest difference of all. It will transform our attitudes as well as strengthen our resolve when the going gets tough. Our right mentality will stiffen our spine to face challenges head-on and help us stay rooted on a firm foundation.
“Perspective is everything.” Have you ever seen those strange pictures that confuse the brain? One I recall, at a glance looks like a vase and then on second glance it’s two people looking at each other. There are lots of them but what they remind us is that what we see, how we interpret a situation, and therefore, how we react, can be quite different from someone else in exactly the same situation.
Perspective makes all the difference. Things look different when we look at them from a different angle. Jesus came to change our perspective, to turned our world upside down by changing our understanding of faith, how we worship, how we live with one another and our expectations of God.
We seem to live in a world with so many changing and different perspectives. It can be very confusing unless we realise the need to turn things around and look at them from a different angle. Perhaps you need to look at a situation from someone else’s perspective in order to understand them or the situation.
In life, our perspective (far more than our circumstances) really matters. In fact, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that our ability to see and properly interpret reality (our perspective) is almost everything. If things in your life "don't look quite right," perhaps you've been looking at things upside-down and you need to allow God to help you to turn things around.
Remember that phrase: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
Rev. Nicki Chatterton
Welcome!
We welcome Sally and Adrian who have come to live at Gaydon Hill Farm Cottages and hope they will enjoy life in the village.
August Nature Notes
As I write these observations, sitting in the shade of my large Walnut tree on one of the hottest days on record, I am surprised by a Collared Dove that has settled on my table and is drinking from a bowl of water behind my i-pad. She peers over the top of the screen, inches from me. This normally shy bird proves how important it is to provide a shallow water dish for birds at this exceptionallly dry time of record high temperatures. She has returned twice in the last few minutes making close eye-contact.
Sadly, her mate was killed and plucked (in profusion) by a Sparrow Hawk in my garden; and so I set out food for her hoping she will find another mate.
We all are realising that global warming has arrived, even in Gaydon. The Swifts went two weeks early and crops are being harvested even earlier, with poor results. The heat has prompted a few butterflies to emerge early, too. I have seen my first Brimstone, a male closing its sulphur wings whilst nectaring on my Valerian plants. Red Admirals, Commas and Peacocks and are frequent as well.
More excitingly, Humming bird Hawk Moths and Painted Ladies butterflies, migrants from South Europe, have come to the plants. Valerians have rather taken over in some parts of the village but these species are a bonus. At night other hawk moths hover around them and luckily our light-polluting Street lamp has long gone, so that the darkness gives them the correct conditions to orientate using their long proboscises to probe the throats of the flowers.
The roadsides are bone dry but you may still see bursts of colour from hardheads or Purple Knapweed and lilac field-scabious. A family of goldfinches perch around my other water bowl dipping their heads. Soon they will be feeding off the Teazel heads on their tall stems; once used for carding textiles, they are still great clothes brushes and the seeds are loved by all finches, whose beaks are adapted to plunge into them. Buzzards and Kites still enjoy circling the thermals and a Red Kite circled the village Hall, quite low, last week.
A solitary Turtle dove was mixing with the local wood pigeons - you cannot miss their constant coocoo-ing - but few other birds are singing now, a quiet time after establishing territories and nesting.
Will there be rain soon? I can only speculate as I pour my recyled washing up water on to the pot plants.
Bernard Price
Seasonal Recipe
Baked Peaches with Cinnamon Cream Sauce
Ingredients: Double cream 250ml, cinnamon stick, 5 cloves
4 ripe peaches, 4tbs brandy, 3tbs soft brown sugar
Method:
Sauce: put the cream in a saucepan, add the cinnamon stick and cloves and bring to the boil; set aside to infuse.
Peaches: heat an overhead oven grill and set the grill tray about 6" below. Cut the peaches in halves, remove the stones and place them cut side up on the tray (or on a shallow roasting dish). Mix the brandy and brown sugar together in a small bowl and spoon over the peaches. Cook under a hot grill for 10 minutes until the surfaces start to caramelise.
Serve with the cream, spices removed.
Another Point of View
Is tidiness a curse?
Reading last month’s ‘Nature notes’ led me to ponder, what is Nature and what is natural? There must have been a point in pre-history when man ceased to be just a gatherer and became a hunter-gatherer: where man’s ingenuity led him to fashion clubs, spears, and snares to kill animals for meat, his conflict with nature began. Since that point, driven by the primary instinct of any species - that of survival - man has influenced his environment in every conceivable way. Take a look at those golden fields of wheat and barley that surround us: they are not natural but a product of man’s need to feed the ever- growing billions of mouths that we create. Between these fields are hedgerows full of brambles and nettles and other fast growing, invasive plants that, if they were not kept in check by regular management, would take over the fields and rob us of our daily bread. You only have to look at the closed off roads around here to see how quickly nature, if left unchecked, would reclaim what man has built. Our ancestors would have had to beat a path through the undergrowth to reach their watering hole. If we let nature run riot over our thoroughfares and pavements, so that we too have to beat a path to our “watering hole”, is there any point in us paying our council to maintain our streets?
In these days of high stress and mental illness, the beneficial effects of gardening are well-documented. Another to good mental health is tidiness, so it would naturally follow that a tidy garden would be twice as beneficial. As we cultivate our beautiful gardens we cultivate wellbeing; with the added bonus that we work in harmony with nature, providing attractive plants for the pollinators. When we see communal spaces that are unkempt, many of us don’t see ‘nature’; we see ‘negligence’. A tidy environment engenders pride in one’s village. Overgrown bushes and vegetation, getting in people’s way and scratching, tearing clothes or getting you wet as you brush past it, can cause stress and consternation.
So is tidiness a curse? No, it has benefits that sometimes can’t be seen.
This doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for nature to be left to - er - ‘nature’. In most cases where cutting back and mowing takes place it is done for sound legitimate reasons such as safety or good practice. An old gardener’s saying goes: “One year’s seeds, Seven years of weeds”. A weed is only a plant in the wrong place, but if you leave them unchecked they will take over. A few suburban ‘weeds’ in the vastness of rural England are not going to save the planet. Nature is resilient and forever changing and adapting. There is ‘nature’ in the driest desert. Nature will be here long after she has rid herself of the cancer that is the human race. It will just be a different environment; as different to our environment as ours is to that of the dinosaurs.
Light Pollution is another matter. There is no denying that there is excessive lighting around our village but moderate and well-designed public lighting does provide a significant safety benefit in the right areas, such as within the village where people need to see where they are walking.
JLR and WCC are the main offenders, hiding feebly behind the excuse of health and safety. 27 streetlights to illuminate a small roundabout is beyond excessive: the light from the Starlight expressway can be seen from miles around, as can the glow from the JLR site. It doesn’t ‘need’ to be like that! AC
New Garden at the Malt Shovel
Our cover this month shows the attractive new seating area in the pub car park - a great success. Congratulations to Paul and Jo!
Something to look forward to!
Harvest Festival at Chadshunt Church on Sunday 9 October at 3pm.
Apple Day 21st October.
Solar Panels
If you are already worried about global heating, then fitting solar panels is the easiest and cheapest way to do something positive about it. Given that we are in a climate emergency and the fact that solar panels are cheaper than they have ever been, at the same time that energy prices are rising, what is stopping people fitting them?
Admittedly, there is now hardly any help available from the government who have diverted the former subsidies into electric vehicle charging infrastructure and the adoption of electric public transport, taxis and delivery vans. You can get a low rate of VAT on the installation of panels if you meet the parameters but the real help available is that solar panels eventually pay for themselves. One incentive that still remains is the Smart Export Guarantee that pays you a certain amount for each kWh of electricity you export to the Grid. For example, someone who fitted panels 10 years ago would now receive negative electricity bills for 4-5 months of the year.
But if you can afford a greenhouse or a conservatory, you can certainly run to solar panels which are cheaper and pay you back as well! Even if you live in a listed building or thatched cottage, if you have a spare patch of garden you can have ground-mounted solar arrays, like JLR up the road. Appearance has a lot to do with why people do not want solar panels: surely panels could be made that blend in with tiled or slated roofs? But at present the situation is too important to worry about aesthetics. Fit a battery and you can maximise the amout of self-generated electricity you use and do even more to reduce your fuel bills in the future.
These latest long heatwaves and droughts are waking us up to the danger the world is in and the immediate cost to ourselves. AK