Parish Council Tues 1st at 7.30pm Village Hall Coffee Morning Sat 12th at 11am Village Hall Mobile Library *Mon 14th at 2.40pm Phone Box Easter Day Service Sun 20th at 9.30am St Giles' Church Tai Chi Wednesdays at 7pm Village Hall
Something to Look Forward to:
VE DAY 80th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS IN GAYDON
Installation of Memorial Seat at the Village Hall
VILLAGE STORE 15th ANNIVERSARY IN MAY
Celebration Summer Fête in the Parish Council Field
6th 9.30am Morning Prayer Gaydon
Palm Sunday
13th 9.30am Holy Communion Gaydon
10am Morning Prayer Northend
Holy Week
Monday 14th 7pm Compline Gaydon
Tuesday 15th 7pm Compline Northend
Wednesday 16th 7pm Compline Fenny Compton
Maundy Thursday 7pm Agapë Meal Gaydon
Good Friday 6pm Prayer Service Fenny Compton
Saturday 19th 7pm Easter Eve Vigil at Burton Dassett
Easter Day Services
9.00am Holy Communion Burton Dassett
9.30am Holy Communion Gaydon
10.30am Family Service Northend
10.30am Holy Communion Fenny Compton
6.00pm Holy Communion Farnborough
27th 10.30am Morning Service Burton Dassett
Sunday Mass 11am every week
The Village Hall Committee would like to hear from any villagers interested in joining a group to run a Fête this summer on the Playing Field behind the church. The last one was held very successfully in 2021 and it seems about time that Gaydon got together for a summer celebration. The 80th Anniversary of Victory in Europe seems an appropriately patriotic theme and there's probably plenty of red, white and blue bunting stashed away in attics and sheds just longing to get out! Your contact is Martin Sotheran on 07796 307957 and he is looking forward to hearing from you. See Sue M on facebook!
Coffee Morning
Saturday 12 April at 11am. There will be a book stall, bring-and-buy and raffle, as well as coffee or tea and biscuits (50p) and an exchange of news and views. Money raised goes to church funds.
The Tai Chi group meets every Wednesday evening at 7 o'clock in the Village Hall. Please text 07514 011406 so that we can look out for you.
Mellow Mondays Monday 7th Gaydon Gathering Tuesday 8th Museum on the Move Friday 11th Evening with Peter Stevens Monday 14th Easter Egg Hunt at the Museum Friday 18th-21st Jaguar Breakfast Club Saturday 19th Easter Access Day Thursday 24th Ultimate BMW Meet Sunday 27th Mini Motorists Easter Crafts Monday 28th
Information and tickets at www.britishmotormuseum.co.uk
On Saturday 12 April there will be a firework display at the British Motor Museum to celebrate a Wedding. It will take place at 9pm and will last for about 8 minutes.
The Mobile Library will call at the Telephone Box at 2.25pm for half an hour on Monday 14th instead of Good Friday (18th).
Kineton Village Hall 10:30am to 12 noon on Friday 25th April.
We'd love to welcome you to our carer support meeting. Along with refreshments and the chance to meet other carers, we'll be getting "creative" again with paints! Absolutely no artistic skill needed!?
Please bring along your loved ones - they can join our Companionship Group while we meet.
For further details about our carer support group or help with transport arrangements to/from our meetings, contact Gillian on 07947 893504 or send an email to kcarers4carers@gmail.com
or explore our website www.carers4carersonthefosse.org.uk.
Please come to Gaydon Village Hall
on Saturday 10 May at 11am.
Your are invited to a Sherry Reception to be held in honour
of the late WF Liddington, former Chairman of the Village Hall,
known to everyone as Francis.
He died in June 2024 at the age of 94 and will be commemorated
with an iron seat to be placed in front of the Hall.
Articles from the Village Hall Archive will be on display.
Mrs Josie Liddington will open the seat.
“Tumtee, tumtee, tumtee, too…!”
Forgive my pathetic attempt to imitate, phonetically, the theme tune for the longest running radio drama in the world, but suddenly “The Archers” (Radio 4) has become relevant to an issue which is central to why CEG (Malta) Ltd’s development should not go ahead.
The fictional village of ‘Ambridge’ in the county of ‘Borsetshire’ has been spectacularly - and devastatingly - inundated with sewage following (climate-change induced?) heavy rainfall. Why? Principally for two reasons: (1) ‘Borsetshire Water’ have neglected to improve sewage settlement beds and pipework to cope with the increased commercial and housing developments overlooking the village;
and: (2) the related concreting has sealed off the fields which used to soak away excessive rainfall and run-off. Sound familiar?
The (fictional) villagers are quick to identify the issues and contradictions at the heart of ‘Borsetshire Water’s ‘management’ of water, drainage and sewage. They rapidly establish that under-investment and non-maintenance goes hand-in-hand with large dividend payments and eye-watering salaries and bonuses(!) for the Executive Officers at this privatised water company.
Sounds very familiar. The fury of the villagers is met with an indifference bordering on contempt on the part of the water company. Hopefully, the water company hasn’t been drinking at the same fountain of inspiration as a certain well-known, prominent American whose motto seems to be “Never give a sucker an even break…!”
Gaydon villagers did not experience fiction in 2007. The sewage-contaminated floodwater was very real. Our household took two and a half years to get back to normal. Some households took longer.
Faced with the greater exponential flood risk posed by the concretised, elevated site poised ominously over the village; a drainage system already shown to be devastatingly inadequate and the greater flooding threat presented by climate change, it’s inconceivable that CEG (Malta) Ltd could be given permission for their development. If permission were to be given, Stratford District Council and various, enthusiastic ‘de-regulators’ in the present government, in the event of a future devastating flood, could be held complicit in allowing it to happen to our village. Do we really want people who represent us and operate our planning and related services to be responsible for that?
Most Gaydon residents will have heard, by now, of the Deeley Properties proposal for a commercial development on the ‘Swallowfields’ site adjacent to the access roundabout for JLR. When I was first alerted to this by a villager, I did wonder whether Deeley’s approach could be a ‘fishing’ exercise to draw out Gaydon villagers’ opinions on employment possibilities - bypassing talk of buildings/structures/environment etc.
One of the beneficiaries of an overly positive response concentrating on employment could be CEG (Malta) Ltd: they could cite Deeley’s survey results as justifying their attempted development! (BTW there’s no suggestion that the two companies are in anyway linked.)
If it’s possible to be objective in this situation (with CEG’s threatened behemoth looming over us!), the Swallowfields site (former JLR vehicle hand-over location), being a part ‘brownfield’ plot well away from housing on relatively level ground, represents a better option than CEG’s multi-problematic site. I have to concede - if anything has to happen - about the preferability of the Swallowfields’ site; I have referenced this in previous ‘Updates’.
It doesn’t mean, though, that we should feel trapped into an ‘either /or’ situation: Deeley’s should go through the due process of consultation and not assume that we would be ‘grateful’ for losing more of our rural environment to a development that should be located in or next to Warwickshire towns.
Oh, and do, if you can, listen to ‘The Archers’…
(N.B. In the above, ‘Any resemblance to a real water company, living or dead, is purely coincidental….’)
Tony Hughes
The next Parish Council Meeting will be held in the Village Hall on Tuesday 1st April at 7.30pm.
Our Hospice at Home Service provides Nursing Care and Symptom Control, Personal Care, Night Care, Respite Support, Emotional Support, Pre- and Post- Bereavement Support, Liaison, Advice and Signposting as part of a multi-disciplinary approach to caring for the whole family. Thank you all for your support!
Here are some dates for your diaries: 26th April, St Edmund's Church, Shipston - An Hour of Glorious Operatic Arias 10th and 11th May - Plant and Home Produce Sales Sunday 25th May - NGS Ilmington Open Gardens All details from: www.shipstonhomenursing.co.uk
We hope that the arrival of springtime finds you all well in Gaydon Village and the surrounding areas. The lighter evenings certainly do give us more of a pep in our steps and hopefully those steps will lead you into your local village shop where we continue to provide our community with our friendly Volunteer Service and all your essential daily needs.
As you may have seen over the past month, we do continue to find ourselves increasingly short of volunteers to carry on offering continuity of service. Once again, we ask that if any of you could offer some of your time to the shop - serving, behind-the-scenes, helping to manage accounts and paperwork or shopping from cash and carry - would you please pop in and speak to us?
We would be so very glad to hear from you.
The Easter holidays will soon be with us, as will our stocks of chocolate eggs, bunnies and chicks. If there is anything else essential to you that we currently do not stock and you need on a regular basis, please do chat to one of our volunteers to see if we can order it for you. We hope to see you all in store very soon! Siobhan
1991 2nd Mary Neal
1998 2nd Muriel Phillips
1979 3rd Frank Lightowler
1993 3rd Roland Phillips
2014 7th Gabriella Talbot
2008 14th Iliana Hayes
1985 16th George Hayes
2024 20th Susan Joan Povey
2004 24th Kathy Welsh
1995 29th Sybil Worrall
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
Whilst travelling in the last month, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and speak to many different people. What I’ve been struck by is their wide range of different backgrounds, jobs and careers: a woman who works in the Diversity sector, a man in tree surgery, a scuba diving teacher, a doctor, a Thai masseuse, an estate agent, a farm worker, a bus driver, a conservationist, an uber driver, an interior designer and many people who work in the hospitality industry.
It was fascinating to hear their stories and how they got into their line of work. All those encounters got me into people watching, and whilst I was waiting in airports or sitting in cafés, I speculated about the stories of the thousands of people around me.
Sometimes the people in a queue ahead of us, that are taking their time to make an order, or are dawdling and taking up the whole pavement when we’re in a rush, or blocking the items we want in the supermarket, can seem like an inconvenience. They are just obstacles that prevent us from getting on with our day. But when we stop to think that behind the eyes of every person we see, there’s another consciousness looking out on the world, another wealth of stories and experiences, of times of joy and sorrow, hope and despair… then the people around us can become fascinating and wonderful.
If we’re not careful, the challenges we face in our lives and the fears for an increasingly unstable world can make us become more inward-looking and less aware of the lives of the people around us and in the wider world. We stop seeing them as human beings, and they become either a means to help us or obstacles in our way. That mindset just adds to the problems in the world, as it’s the key reason the world is in the mess that it is.
If we want to play a part in healing our world, then it’s a helpful start to recognise the beautiful and amazing diversity in the people around us. We are all made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and despite our many mistakes and failings, we are still unconditionally loved by God… even if we do take too long to make up our minds about what to order!
It's that unconditional love that we celebrate in the Easter story: Jesus taught that no matter what we have done (or not done), we are still unconditionally loved by God, and his life, death and resurrection underline that fact; even if we reject God and kill him, he still comes back offering forgiveness and hope.
My prayer for all of us, as we navigate these difficult times, is that we would take time to recognise the humanity of all people, to celebrate it, love it, and respect it. And that in doing that, we may become part of the healing needed in our beautiful but broken world. Happy Easter! Rev. Barry Jackson, Priest-in-charge
Although there are still below-freezing temperatures at nights, day time
temperatures have risen quite a lot by comparison. One warm day I was visited by a saffron yellow butterfly, the Brimstone, a true harbinger of spring - and the longest-lived species in the UK - fresh out of a long
hibernation. I previously saw a superb Peacock at the Allotments; the old outbuildings there are a favoured place for winter dormancy. A great number of large Queen bumblebees are now questing for suitable spots to start new colonies.
Botanically, there are already Primroses in flower on the verges along with Hellebores. There are, of course, non-native daffodils in many places and emerging bluebells already in bud.
Birdsong is very noticeable now as territories are being established. My favourite is the very loud melodious Song Thrush often heard around the village. I decided to resort to 'Merlin' (not the Arthurian character but an App you can download free!). This picks up birdsong from a wide span of habitat.
One very warm morning I set it up in my garden whilst taking a morning cup of tea. Soon, local birds were being recorded. I expected the Jackdaws and Woodpigeons, House Sparrows, Dunnocks, Blue tits and Robins which are so used to my presence that they will feed a few feet from where I am sitting on the patio. There were the often-heard Goldfinches, Great Tits and odd passing Raven, too. Then, to my surprise, came Greenfinches and Goldcrests, spotted with with my binoculars in my distant silver birchtrees. And then a flock,of Linnets, a Collared dove and a Song Thrush at the top of my Walnut tree. Surely Spring cannot be far away now! Bernard Price
If you have something to celebrate or commemorate, ring Siobhan on 07780 689582, and she will raise the flag for you, in return for a £5 contribution to Church funds.