Category: Community Groups

“Midnight Blue” & “Hello Beautiful”

OFF THE SHELF

“Midnight Blue” by Simone van der Vlugt

The group were all quick to agree that this was an excellent easy read for the month and gave it a score of 8 out of 10.

The book is set in the Netherlands in the 17th Century and although lacks historical references there is an excellent plot which twists and turns throughout the story. Catrin, the main character of the book, is a strong and ambitious woman who leaves her hometown, after the death of her husband. There is a dark shadow cast over her exodus which gradually unfolds throughout the story and her dark past is forever following her. She first finds employment as a housekeeper in Amsterdam, where the city is flourishing, and it is here that her talents and skills as an artist are discovered. Catrin tries to fulfil this ambition but is thwarted until she leaves for the smaller city of Delft. As a designer of ceramics, she tries to survive life as a widow and finally marriage. The book is written in the first person, and this helps to develop Catrin’s strong emotions and feelings that have been formed by her relationships and hardships in her life.

Isobel Davies

“Hello Beautiful” by Ann Napolitano

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano is an unlikely title, for a book about William, who has great difficulties relating to a real world.

After a childhood of neglectful love, his parents had lost a baby and were incapable of showing any feeling. William’s one interest in life is baseball and he achieves a scholarship to a college. He meets Julia and her loving family of sisters who almost adopt William. So, the story continues with Julia, a great world organiser falling for William and they get married, later in life, they divorce, and he marries her sister, who through her love of books, understands William and his isolating life.

The group gave the book a score of 8 out of 10

Anne Gill

“Midnight Blue” by Simone van der Vlugt

OFF THE SHELF

“Midnight Blue” by Simone van der Vlugt

The group were all quick to agree that this was an excellent easy read for the month and gave it a score of 8 out of 10.

The book is set in the Netherlands in the 17th Century and although lacks historical references there is an excellent plot which twists and turns throughout the story. Catrin, the main character of the book, is a strong and ambitious woman who leaves her hometown, after the death of her husband. There is a dark shadow cast over her exodus which gradually unfolds throughout the story and her dark past is forever following her. She first finds employment as a housekeeper in Amsterdam, where the city is flourishing, and it is here that her talents and skills as an artist are discovered. Catrin tries to fulfil this ambition but is thwarted until she leaves for the smaller city of Delft. As a designer of ceramics, she tries to survive life as a widow and finally marriage. The book is written in the first person, and this helps to develop Catrin’s strong emotions and feelings that have been formed by her relationships and hardships in her life.

 

Isobel Davies

“Hello Beautiful” by Ann Napolitano

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano is an unlikely title, for a book about William, who has great difficulties relating to a real world.

After a childhood of neglectful love, his parents had lost a baby and were incapable of showing any feeling. William’s one interest in life is baseball and he achieves a scholarship to a college. He meets Julia and her loving family of sisters who almost adopt William. So, the story continues with Julia, a great world organiser falling for William and they get married, later in life, they divorce, and he marries her sister, who through her love of books, understands William and his isolating life.

The group gave the book a score of 8 out of 10

Anne Gill

Energy Security

WENVOE FORUM

Considering Tomorrow Today

Why not build into the Community plan , – Energy Security

One of the potentially biggest problems facing us, here in the UK in the next couple of decades is the failure of our power generation and distribution network. The world around us has changed and will continue to change. Our National Grid, which was so efficient when created was designed to carry electricity from large generators to much smaller consumers and cabling, switches, controls etc reflect this structure with safety switches that blow if certain components are over stretched. The future is more likely to see small distributed generators feeding into the central system so the grid is upside down, back to front certainly, in some way, the wrong way round. Now the temptation is to give up and leave such matters to the Government, it is the long term strategic player, or is it? Governments have very short term 4/5 years of secure power to act, whereas the community may be here for generations. Setting Energy Security as a long term aim of the Community Plan informs the direction of travel, opens the way for perhaps a shared bulk purchase of solar panels, it’s a starting point and one which might be achieved.

.

To join our Facebook group, please ‘friend up’ with the Gwen Fo ac-count @ https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo.1 and then jon the Wenvoe Forum @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/635369267864402

Some further information and updates, blog site https://wenvoeforum.wordpress.com/. Any Wenvoe community member is welcome to join the Forum meetings, via Zoom, which are normally held 19.00 on the second Thursday of each month. E-mail gwen-fo.forum@gmail.com if you wish to join

“Still Life” by Sarah Winman

“Still Life” by Sarah Winman

This novel engendered a lively discussion and was generally considered an enjoyable and involving read.

The many characters are diverse and their lives are documented over four decades. Much of the story alternates between England and Italy, where the descriptions of Florence are highly evocative: several Page Turners remembered happy visits, although one reader had an unwelcome reminder of a bottom-pinching experience while there!

Much of the book explores the nature of enduring loyalty and friendship and how these survive absence.

Claude, the talking parrot, was deemed ridiculous, but entertaining. For some, the lack of quotation marks was irritating, but others thought conversations flowed more effectively as a result. Some varied comments: well-written with flashes of brilliance; disjointed; too many descriptions of meals and coffee breaks.

Two Page Turners enjoyed listening to the novel on eAudiobooks via the BorrowBox service at the Hub. A great read with score of 7 out of 10.

 

Many thanks to Sandra for hosting and providing delectable cakes.

Our Future Health Project

WENVOE FORUM

Considering Tomorrow Today

“Our Future Health Project

Nearly 2,000.000 people have already joined, how about you? ”

Last month’s Forum article suggested that we as individuals can, given the right help and information, have a substantial impact on our own health. It also touched on bigger scale actions taken by Government at all levels and one such project is Our Future Health. This is the UK’s biggest health research programme ever. As the name implies it aims to collect information now which will improve health in the future. Through working with a mind blowing 5 million people, nearly 7.5% of the population, drawn from all sorts of background, the programme expects to discover and test more effective ways of detecting, preventing and treating disease. There has been much discussion over a number of years about the focus of the health service and the need to invest resources in such a way as to encourage a healthy, long lived population and not just treat the sick. Our Future Health is part of this change.

Diseases often start in the body long before symptoms are noticed, and by the time individuals present to the NHS, the disease has taken hold and has already done damage. Much of the workload for the NHS is treating people who are very sick and we should be very grateful that the free at the point of delivery NHS that we have is there for us in our time of need. How much better it would be if we didn’t reach that crisis point. Detecting disease at an earlier stage means that treatment can begin sooner and is often much less intrusive and more effective. To explore what to look out for at an earlier stage a collaboration between public, private and charity sectors is actively researching on what can only be described as a huge scale.

Our Future Health will encourage individuals to volunteer a little of their time and possibly a small sample of blood. It will be really important that those participants come from all over the UK and from all sorts of different backgrounds so that they represent different ethnic backgrounds, different economic situations, different geographical areas, those who do and don’t have existing health issues etc etc.

The first step is for individuals to set up an account and they will then be able to complete a health and lifestyle questionnaire. Information is provided about how the project looks after data and at all stages consent is required. At any point an individual can withdraw and the data is held in a way that means the individual cannot be identified. The project will bring all of a participant’s health records together and the individual will be invited to attend a clinic where they will donate a small blood sample and complete some questionnaires and tests. Participants receive £10 in recognition of their help. Some of the blood is tested immediately but some will be retained for testing in the future which will be very useful and may shorten the development time of new diagnostic tests, treatments or vaccines. This huge bank of information will be available to researchers in the UK and beyond.

Nearly 2 million people have already joined and much more information is available at website ourfuturehealth.org.uk. This is something you can do to help improve the future for the whole population.

Our Future Health is a charity and company ltd by guarantee and it is supported by UK Research and Innovation, life sciences companies and disease-related charities.

 

Community Planning – Don’t forget that on 23rd November you can come to the Community Centre to talk about the future of Wenvoe and how Local Government, Service providers and the community can set out together joint ambitions for the medium and long term. Setting a long term plan is not easy, sometimes a long term issue is easy to turn into a vision but sometimes it is easier to identify what you don’t want for the future of Wenvoe. Either way, call in on 23rd for a chat.

To join our Facebook group, please ‘friend up’ with the Gwen Fo ac-count @ https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo.1 and then jon the Wenvoe Forum @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/635369267864402

Some further information and updates, blog site https://wenvoeforum.wordpress.com/. Any Wenvoe community member is welcome to join the Forum meetings, via Zoom, which are normally held 19.00 on the second Thursday of each month. E-mail gwen-fo.forum@gmail.com if you wish to join

Gower – A Visit to The Worm’s Head

Gower – A Visit to The Worm’s Head

A glorious day in September saw five of us travelling to Rhossili in a quest to walk over to Worms Head – the island which sits in Rhossili Bay and is accessible at low tide.

The National Trust (NT) car park was neat and green with lots of picnic tables. We walked to the end of the headland and after one of us said ‘I’d love to be certain I had seen a chough’, we were thrilled to see them, with red beaks and legs, doing acrobatics in the breeze and calling. Further along were horses grazing.

Soon we were descending the slope to the beach and clambering across rocks. With almost 2 hours to low tide, and a sign stating that the causeway is safe until 3p.m., there was plenty of time for the crossing. Although a little concerned that the rocks would be slippery with seaweed, there was no need as all the rocks are covered in barnacles and tiny mussels. Soon the sea was either side of us, but it is a wide causeway at low tide.

Arriving at the island we walked to the end of the main section. An easy climb to the ridge of the island, then a climb above the path to sit where a small ridge gives a view of Rhossili and Llangenith beaches to have a snack. As we sit, we exclaim together ‘oh look seals’ about 6 of them basking on the rocks below us. Cormorants fly, dive and stretch their wings. As we eat our lunch we watch as seals try to knock each other off rocks and make ‘friends’. A large bull is about twice the size of all the others and lifts his head and tail together posturing. More seals are spotted swimming in the sea and gradually clamber onto the rocks so that by the time we leave there are 9 of them.

We haven’t walked to the far end, the Outer Head via Devil’s Bridge, but it looks more uneven from here and the tide is already turning so we call it a day and start our return to the mainland. We head away from our earlier path to a flatter route and are careful not to trip. Those barnacles would rip your skin if you fell! Our path seems more uneven with some stretches of large rocks to scramble over.

Arriving back on the beach we walk south east along the ledge above the beach. Streaks of quartz sparkle in the chunky stones apparently untouched by man and washed by the sea on every tide. The sea sparkles in the sun reflecting a beautiful blue sky.

Now we head inland and make our way over to the next bay – Fall Bay – Rather than clamber over rocks again we walk around the bay and down a narrow path which finishes with a few steep drops over polished rocks. Just a few people are settled around the edge of the bay.

Everyone changed into swimming gear and ran down to the sea for a dip – I don’t swim well so paddled in the shallows. And Auri, the dog, who hates water stood at the edge and ran every time a wave approached. As I walk out of the sea to race the incoming waves, there are sensations of vertigo from the rushing patterns of the frothy water on the sand.

We climbed back up above the bay and across fields to the NT carpark. Several fields have been planted with flowers by the NT: the first has sunflowers and several different types of clover, a 4th plant with a pink flower is probably also a clover with an incredible honey scent which completely fills the air, the second has sunflowers, cornflowers and a few other meadow flowers and the third has wildflowers but no sunflowers – calendula, poppies, cornflower etc. A delight especially as there are still quite a few blooms so late in the season.

Back at the cars we make our way to the balcony of the pub and sip beers gazing over Rhossili bay. The wreck of the Helvetia (wrecked 1887) gradually disappears as the tide comes in. We could sit for hours but eventually we set off home, leaving one person to find a campsite where she was staying in her motorhome overnight

What a magical day, sunshine from dawn to dusk, good company, some amazing wildlife, flowers none of us knew and a visit to the Worm’s Head achieved. And to cap it all that night there was a full moon shining clearly after we got home. What a shame only five of us were able to make it!

October Thursday Walks

 

THURSDAY WALKERS

Next Walk

 

On Thursday 7th November, a circular walk of about 5 miles beginning at Hailey Park and including the Llandaff Cathedral area and the coffee shop.

Meet 1.00pm at Wenvoe Village Hall. Many thanks, Bert. 07828665264

All are welcome but you participate at your own risk

 

 

 

October Meeting of Wenvoe W.I

WOMEN’S INSTITUTE

October Meeting of Wenvoe W.I.

Wenvoe WI met in October for their usual monthly meeting. This time it was a Fish and Chip evening, with excellent fare supplied and delivered piping hot from the Fryers Club in Ely. After the business, we were treated to a variety of favourite poems read out by several members. Some of the poetry was ‘home grown’, whilst others ranged from the pen of Rudyard Kipling to Pam Ayres in their diversity. Yet again, several potential new members were welcomed into the fray.

We have a busy month culminating in a trip to the Organ Palace in Treorchy, where we hope to view keyboards and organs in their manufacture and to be treated to a concert and a cream tea.

Our next meeting is on 7th November at 7pm in the Church Hall. This will be a ‘hands on’ craft evening led by Mrs Carol Charleson. With Christmas just around the corner, we are all wondering if it will be a seasonal session.

In December we shall be holding our usual Christmas Party as well as a festive Coffee Morning.

New members and ‘tasters’ are always welcome at our meetings.

Jan Young (President)

 

1 2 3 … 78