Category: General Interest Articles

Articles of general interest on no particular subject

Wenvoe Forum – Considering Today And Tomorrow

WENVOE FORUM – CONSIDERING TODAY AND TOMORROW

A big thank you to those of you who completed our survey or sent us comments. We need to get many more replies to make sure we are really hearing the views of the whole village but those who have been kind enough to give us a few minutes of their time seem to confirm that we are thinking along the right lines, with a high percentage interest in environmental issues.

As a next step we have set up a community meeting

Act today so that we can bequeath our children and grandchildren clean water, fresh air and a healthy environment in which they too can thrive. Tomorrow will be too late. Join our meeting to plan what we, the Wenvoe Community can do.

Zoom Meeting

Achieving Zero Together

Thursday 1st July

7.00 – 8.30pm

  • Vale of Glamorgan – Project Zero, what the LA can do, how we can help
  • Wenvoe residents – Your ideas for projects, activities and actions
  • Next steps – We’ll need help to move forward with the priorities

E-mail Gwenfo.Forum@gmail.com with ZERO as a title to book your place (limit 100 connections)

The need to tackle climate change is pressing. According to its website “Project Zero is the Vale of Glamorgan Council’s response to the climate change emergency. Project Zero brings together the wide range of work and opportunities available to tackle the climate emergency, reduce the Council’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2030 and encourage others to make positive changes.”

It is an ambitious wide ranging plan that covers buildings and energy use, sustainable travel and transport, a green infrastructure plan, waste management and promotion of a circular economy and more. You can read more on the Vale of Glamorgan website and at the above meeting on Zoom, Tom Bowring, Head of Policy and Business Transformation will give an overview of Project Zero and what it will mean for Wenvoe, how we can help the local authority meet its carbon emission aims and how it can help us with our projects to tackle climate change.

Another idea that scored highly with survey respondents was helping to reduce food miles by making sustainably produced, low waste, food available to buy easily in the village, particularly fresh products.

We will be setting up a social media presence for the forum so that people can link with us more easily, so look out for Gwen Fo on Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo)

The need to tackle climate change is pressing. According to its website “Project Zero is the Vale of Glamorgan Council’s response to the climate change emergency. Project Zero brings together the wide range of work and opportunities available to tackle the climate emergency, reduce the Council’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2030 and encourage others to make positive changes.”

It is an ambitious wide ranging plan that covers buildings and energy use, sustainable travel and transport, a green infrastructure plan, waste management and promotion of a circular economy and more. You can read more on the Vale of Glamorgan website and at the above meeting on Zoom, Tom Bowring, Head of Policy and Business Transformation will give an overview of Project Zero and what it will mean for Wenvoe, how we can help the local authority meet its carbon emission aims and how it can help us with our projects to tackle climate change.

Another idea that scored highly with survey respondents was helping to reduce food miles by making sustainably produced, low waste, food available to buy easily in the village, particularly fresh products.

We will be setting up a social media presence for the forum so that people can link with us more easily, so look out for Gwen Fo on Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo

More opinions needed please

If you haven’t completed the survey please, please do, it only takes 2 minutes. You will find it at this address:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/7Y2G95H

or on our Facebook page.

We particularly want to hear from younger residents, under 25s, students at school, college or university after all it’s your future we are thinking about.

Anyone who would like to join the Forum for its on-line meetings will be very welcome, please contact us at  Gwenfo.Forum@gmail.com  and we can tell you more.

 

 

Talk About Having To Go!

TALK ABOUT HAVING TO GO!

Wood frogs in Alaska have been known to hold their urine for up to eight months, sticking it out through the region’s long winters before relieving themselves once temperatures increase. The urine actually helps keep the animal alive while it hibernates, with special microbes in their gut that recycle the urea (urine’s main waste) into nitrogen

 

 

 

Turn On, Tune In And Drop……Everything !

TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP…………EVERYTHING !

The Wenvoe Mast is transmitting another Royal Event this June

On 17th April, more than 13 million people in the UK watched live television coverage of the funeral of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. The BBC’s coverage of the scaled-back military procession and St George’s chapel service at Windsor Castle alone attracted 11 million viewers. The Queen Mother’s 2002 funeral was watched by 10.4 million, while that of Diana, Princess of Wales, had a record 32 million in 1997. On happier days 26 million tuned in to watch the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge tie the knot at Westminster Abbey, while Harry and Meghan’s Windsor wedding, pulled in around 18 million across all TV channels.

We have become accustomed to seeing royal events on our TV screens. It was Prince Philip himself of course, who paved the way for national TV coverage of royal events. As chair of the committee organising his wife’s 1953 coronation, the Duke of Edinburgh overruled the fierce view of the then prime minister, Winston Churchill, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, that admitting cameras to film the ceremony would destroy the majesty of the occasion. But Prince Philip, already an early adopter of home videos, gambled that letting family pictures into homes would humanise and popularise the Royal Family.

Planning began immediately after King George VI died (on 6 February 1952), and over the following months the sale of television sets rose in anticipation of the big day. The BBC had acquired 100 redundant military transmitters at the end of the War, and BBC engineers went to work converting them for sound and picture transmissions for the north east of England and Northern Ireland – which would otherwise be without coverage.

We did not have that problem of course, because our local Wenvoe transmitter had already been built at a cost of £250,000 and opened in August 1952. Fully operational, the original Wenvoe mast, some 750 feet high, allowed households across South Wales and the West Country to see the Coronation as it happened. By late 1952 it was estimated that about one family in every 25 owned a TV and the mast ensured 8 million people would get the opportunity to tune in to the historic events.

Nearly 70 years later, the Wenvoe transmitter is still enabling us to watch live coverage of royal events. If Covid 19 rules allow, on 12th June many of us will tune in to TV coverage of the Queen’s Official Birthday Parade or Trooping the Colour. The ceremony is believed to have been first performed during the reign of King Charles II (1660–1685) and has been used to mark the official birthday of The Sovereign since 1748. The Queen has taken the salute at every parade since her accession to the throne in 1952 other than in 1955 when there was a national rail strike.

These spectacular royal events make for great television and the British seem to be able to pull them off with a panache and style the envy of other countries. Subject to restrictions, which could mean a scaled down and less public event, F Company Scots Guards will this year Troop their Colour in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen. It is hoped that up to 1,450 soldiers of the Household Division and The King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, along with up to 400 musicians from the Massed Bands, will take part. Over 240 soldiers from the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards will line The Mall. A fly past by the Royal Air Force will also take place.

 

 

 

New Male Voice Members Wanted

BARRY MALE VOICE CHOIR

READY FOR SOMETHING NEW AFTER LOCKDOWN ?

IT’S TIME TO JOIN THE BARRY MALE VOICE CHOIR FAMILY

WE’LL BE SINGING AGAIN SOON

TO FIND OUT MORE RING MARTYN ON 07850689983

OR EMAIL bmvcsec@gmail.com

In view of lockdown we thought we might remind the male readers of the benefits of singing to both physical and mental health.

Barry Male Voice is a registered charity and raises funds for various causes. We are looking to recruit new members, hence the invitation. Probably not happening before early May but if anyone’s interested, they can contact us about a start date.

 

 

Sons of the Desert

THAT’S ANOTHER FINE MESS STANLEY

While on a visit to the Tourist Office in Ulverston which is in Cumbria, we came across a statue of Laurel and Hardy.

This comedy pair were well known in the silent film era and went on to make many ‘talkies’. I have seen many of their films.

Stan Laurel was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson in 1890 at the home of his grandparents, Sarah and George Metcalf. He lived there for the first six years of his life before moving to Bishop Auckland. Stan however continued to spend much of his school holidays with Grandma and Grandpa Metcalf in Ulverston and apparently Grandma Metcalf had to keep a close eye on Stan as they walked through the streets as often he would stop and make faces in the glass windows of the shops. Mrs Metcalf would often find that she had left Stan behind as she walked.

The Council have now made a Stan Laurel Trail around Ulverston and the statue (see picture) of ‘The Boys’ was given to the town by the Sons of the Desert which is the International Appreciation Society for Laurel and Hardy. When Stan returned to Ulverston with Ollie in 1947, he received a hero’s welcome and was presented with a copy of his birth certificate on the balcony of the Coronation Hall.

Sons of the Desert is devoted to keeping the lives and works of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy before the public, and to have a good time while doing it.

The group takes its name from a lodge that the co-medians belong to in the 1933 film Sons of the Desert. In keeping with the tongue-in-cheek “desert” theme, each local chapter of the society is called a “tent,” and is named after a Laurel & Hardy film. Worldwide, there are well over 100 active tents, whose members meet regularly to enjoy Laurel & Hardy movies in an informal atmosphere

So what is the film Sons of the Desert all about?

Well Stan and Ollie trick their wives into thinking that they are taking a medicinal cruise while they’re actually going to a convention, the wives find out the truth the hard way.

So that he and Stan can sneak away to Chicago and attend the annual “Sons of the Desert” lodge convention, Ollie pretends to be sick, and gets a doctor (who turns out to be a veterinarian) to prescribe a long ocean voyage to Hawaii. They return home only to learn that the ship supposedly carrying them has sunk in a typhoon. Their hastily- contrived tale of “ship-hiking” their way back cuts no ice with their wives, who’ve been at the movies watching a newsreel of the lodge’s convention parade, starring… guess who?

 

The nearest tent to Wenvoe is in Bristol and called the Fraternally Yours Tent.

 

Colin Jenkins

 

 

A Right Royal Ticking Off

A RIGHT ROYAL TICKING OFF

It was a bleak day in Belfast in the spring of 1981 when I opened a smart-looking envelope with a Royal crest. The writer said, in rather formal language, that His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales had asked whether I would be prepared to be an usher at his forthcoming wedding to Lady Diana Spencer? I guess it was one of those offers in life that one could not refuse. In fact, I was thrilled to be asked and delighted to accept and it put a spring in my step for days to come. Years before I had the honour to serve as an equerry to the Prince of Wales which is why I was called back for this special occasion. An equerry is historically an officer of the household of a prince or noble who had charge over the stables. These days an usher is more of an executive assistant, though officially he is an officer of the British royal household who attends or assists members of the royal family.

It was a couple of months later that I was asked to attend a rehearsal in St Paul’s cathedral. There were many of us present as there were going to be 3500 wedding guests attending and there was going to be a good deal of organisation and ushing required on the big day. We were shown which part of the magnificent cathedral we would be responsible for and exactly what our task would be. It was an added pleasure that my wife had been included as a guest at the wedding and she took pleasure in choosing a suitable dress, hat and shoes to wear for the day.

A second invitation, printed on the thickest of white card with a gold rim, had arrived inviting us to attend a grand ball to celebrate the marriage. This was to be held in Buckingham Palace two days before the wedding. The dress for men was “White Tie” and I had never worn that before in my life. So it was off to Moss Bros where I could hire the full suit which is the most formal in traditional evening Western dress codes. For men, it consists of a black dress coat with tails worn over a white shirt, Piqué waistcoat and the eponymous white bow tie worn around a standing wingtip collar. To ensure we were fully prepared for this special occasion we even went to ballroom dancing classes to brush up on skills which in my case were very lacking.

The reception and ball were certainly very grand affairs. I remember that after a fine glass of champagne on arrival we joined a line to be introduced to Prince Charles and Diana, and how radiant she looked. We then walked on and found Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen were playing in one of the staterooms and that music certainly appealed to the younger generation, while a small orchestra was playing waltzes for the more sedate guests in the main ballroom. Dinner was a magnificent buffet laid out in a few of the rooms and, given the numbers, there was no formal seating so one sat at any table and you could be sitting with the leader of a Highland clan or a gamekeeper from a royal estate. The decorations for the party were breath-taking and included some helium balloons with the Prince of Wales Feathers. As we were thinking of leaving, I noticed some people taking down balloons as souvenirs. With the best of wines inside me, I dared to join them and soon I was holding four balloons. At this point, the Queen passed by me and remarked that “four was a bit greedy”! She was quite right of course, but I said they were for the others in our small group. I felt properly admonished by the highest authority in the land!

The wedding itself was a stunning occasion of pomp and pageantry. With three choirs the cathedral was full of wonderful singing and the elegant guests I was responsible for all turned up and sat where they should. My mother watching on TV at home in Cardiff was as proud as punch that I was on duty and was convinced that she saw me in my blue uniform and crimson sash. We drove home later that day and our children were delighted with the fancy balloons we gave them.

 

 

A Wenvoe Forum

A WENVOE FORUM

Considering Today and Tomorrow

Please can you help?

Following a call out issued at the beginning of March a small group of like-minded people have met on Zoom to create a think tank or forum to bring together the ideas and aspirations of the village.

We have lived through a sometimes strange and troubling year or more, with the path through to an acceptable existence alongside Covid still a bit un-clear and a pressing future need for a rebuilt and changed economy that takes account of climate change and environmental issues. However, throughout all, the Wenvoe community has proved itself caring, resourceful and in good spirit and well up to the job of helping to create that future in a very positive way.

The future belongs to all of us and particularly to the younger residents, families, children and young people who will be living with the consequences of plans, decisions and actions taken now for the rest of their lives. It’s important that everyone feels able to have a say in shaping the plan.

A “Considering Today and Tomorrow” may sound a little grand, but be assured a grand plan is usually made up of lots of small actions.

So how can you contribute your ideas and help to see them come to life.

1.The group would be delighted to have a few more individual members so that it is more representative of the whole community. If you are a family with children, a young person, the owner of a local business or any resident of the village, with an hour to spare every 3 weeks or so the please contact us –

e-mail:  gareth.stone1@btinternet.com

2.The forum is keen to build on the very strong community groups and networks that already exist. We don’t want to duplicate what is already happening but to plug any gaps. Sharing information and ideas is the key. Individual members of the forum could link directly with your group or you could put forward a representative. Please make contact via e-mail gareth.stone1@btinternet.com

3.We have already discussed lots of ideas and would love to know whether you think we are on the right track.

We have created a very short 2 minute on line survey – please fill it in there:-

4.We want to hear from people of all ages so several members of the household can each complete their own survey.

 

We want to hear your ideas too, please send them to gareth.stone1@btinternet.com

Thank you, we’re looking forward to hearing from you.

 

 

Teacher Adventures: School Trips

Teacher Adventures: School Trips

“Would you like to accompany 30 children to Madagascar on their French language trip?” asked the French teacher at the school I was working at in Kenya.

“Oui, merci,” I replied, rapidly recalling my GCSE francais! The French teacher assigned to the trip was ill, so fortunately for me, I was drafted in as a last minute replacement.

Two weeks later, 30 very excited students gathered at Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi, for the flight to the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo. The trip was an opportunity for the students to practise their French (both Malagasy and French are both official languages of Madagascar) and to experience a different culture and way of life. Madagascan culture is renowned for its colourful fusion of influences drawn from seafaring Borneans and Bantu Africans, Arabic and Tamil traders, and French colonisation (unlike the British colonisation in Kenya).

Madagascar is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately 250 miles off the coast of East Africa. Madagascar is the world’s second-largest island country and the nation comprises the island of Madagascar (the fourth-largest island in the world) and numerous smaller peripheral islands. We were to be based in a hotel on the east coast of the island. Days were planned to include French lessons in the morning, followed by a swim and snorkelling in the Indian Ocean or swimming pool; excursions were organised for the afternoons to allow the students to experience some of the historical, cultural and artistic attractions of the island.

The students loved visiting the capital, Antananarivo, known locally (and considerably simpler) as Tana. They had the opportunity to admire the beautiful colonial architecture in the old Haute-Ville area of the city, visit one of the art galleries and museums and to spend their money in the open air market stalls at Analakely. Other trips were planned to see the truly alien landscapes of the limestone karsts in north western Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park and the Avenue of the Baobabs, where 25 baobab trees over 100 feet tall are strung out along the Tsiribihina dirt road.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the trip was the visit to see the lemurs. As a result of the island’s isolation from neighbouring continents, Madagascar is home to various plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Approximately 90% of all plant and animal species found in Madagascar are endemic. There are many bizarre and wonderful creatures to be seen on the island, but lemurs are the creature most closely associated with Madagascar. The students, and staff, were thrilled to find and see these charismatic primates in the forest and their saucer shaped eyes were peculiar, but strangely endearing. All agreed they were an amazing, very special sight.

 

Near the end of our week’s stay, our idyllic routine was severely interrupted. In Madagascar, the combination of south eastern trade winds and north western monsoons produces a hot rainy season with frequently destructive cyclones. Unfortunately, tropical cyclone Kamisy coincided with our visit. Kamisy was considered the worst tropical cyclone to affect northern Madagascar since 1911 and winds reached up to 105 mph. Throughout Madagascar, a total of 68 casualties were reported, and 7000 buildings were destroyed, including 1020 schools and 450 hospitals. Following the storm, emergency food and medical supplies were supplied to the nation from French rescue missions.

For our Nairobi students, a cyclone was a novel, and frightening experience. Confined to the hotel they could watch from the windows of their rooms as the trunks of trees were blown to 45 degrees, as the sea was whipped up to a frenzy, as the sand billowed uncontrollably along the beach and as the swimming pool water was thrown against the dining room windows. Lights flashed on and off as the electricity supply was interrupted and hotel staff were unable to arrive at or leave the hotel as roads were covered with fallen trees.

We were confined to the hotel for the final 2 days of our trip. We could not travel across the island as roads were blocked. The pool was out of bounds due to damage caused by the cyclone and the landscape in the gardens of the hotel had changed completely: debris from trees was scattered everywhere and some trees swayed perilously after the storm.

A change of programme was necessary. French lessons continued in the morning and in the afternoons it was my responsibility to provide entertainment…..Fortunately I had packed some dance tapes and spent the afternoons teaching an assortment of dance routines to very eager, enthusiastic and excitable students, who soon forgot they should have been enjoying the delights of Madagascar! The high spot was, remember this, FLASHDANCE…the routine was repeated innumerable times, in pairs, in trios, in fours, as a mass dance….all that was missing were the leotards and leg warmers!

After 2 days we were allowed to leave the hotel to travel to the airport. We could see the destruction caused by the cyclone as we travelled through the countryside: buildings destroyed, houses without roofs, vegetation uprooted. It was a gloomy, depressing sight. We had some wonderful memories of Madagascar, but also realised that the people who lived on this beautiful island sometimes had to endure, at times, some very unforgiving, harsh conditions.

 

 

The Weird And Wonderful World Of Democracy

THE WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF DEMOCRACY

When you rock up at the community centre to cast your vote in the Senedd Cymru elections, you might come across people exercising their right to vote for the very first time. Not everyone welcomed the idea of extending the vote to 16 year olds, but the Welsh Government hope that this move will encourage young people to engage with the political process. An estimated 33,000 foreign nationals can now also take part provided they meet certain legal and residency requirements. Our politicians of course, will be looking to attract voters both old and new. All told they will spend more than £1 million, encouraging us to turn out and especially to vote for them.

Things have moved on quite a bit since democracy first got going in 5th century Athens, when women, slaves and foreigners were excluded. We took some time to catch on to the idea of democracy. Until the Reform Act of 1832 certain ‘rotten boroughs’ in the pockets of rich landowners, elected two Members of Parliament even though there were few or even no actual voters. Dunwich in Suffolk, which as a result of coastal erosion had almost fallen into the sea and Old Sarum in Wiltshire, which consisted of two or three houses, were classic examples. This situation was even more absurd when you consider that until 1832 new industrial towns like Manchester with a population of 60,000, did not have a single MP.

In the rare event there was a properly contested election those who could afford to stand came up with some cunning plans to make sure voters turned up and voted for them and it wasn’t just in Britain. In 1758, George Washington, then a young candidate for the Virginia House of Burgesses, bought a huge round of drinks on Election Day. Washington spent his entire campaign budget — £50 — on 160 gallons of liquor served to 391 voters. The custom of buying votes with booze was perhaps not surprisingly a British tradition imported to the American colonies. In Wales we had one of the finest examples. A celebrated contest took place in Carmarthenshire in 1802 between James Hamlyn Williams and William Paxton. The election was said to have cost Paxton a total of £15,000. This included 11,070 breakfasts, 36,901 dinners, 25,275 gallons of ale, 11,068 bottles of spirits, 8,879 bottles of porter, 460 of sherry, 509 of cider and gallons of milk punch. The contest became known as ‘Lecsiwn Fawr’ (the Great Election). In spite of these efforts, Paxton was defeated and spent two years settling his debts! Things are a bit different today and in some US states such as Utah, buying any alcoholic beverages on the day of the election is actually prohibited. Indiana recently abolished this rule, but they have their own interesting take on elections where the sheriff is called to haul you out of the voting booth if you take too long – reckoned to be a maximum of three minutes.

A record $14 million was spent by the candidates during the 2020 US presidential election campaign. In the UK the spending limit for each candidate standing for election as an MP is £8,700 plus 6p per registered parliamentary elector. The current Senedd Cymru elections will cost our politicians a pretty penny. In 2016 even the Monster Raving Loony Party spent £8,808! This may not have gone down well if it was in Ohio where they have a clause that prohibits idiots from voting — no, really. It reads, “No idiot, or insane person, shall be entitled to the privileges of an elector.” Some US voters recently went so far as to suggest that this clause should apply to presidential elections as well!

 

 

 

1 … 16 17 18 19 20 … 31