The Grapevine MagazineSeptember 2006 Issue No 214 |
Village Shop |
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Following the closure of Lewknor Village Shop in the summer, a survey was undertaken to see whether the community could and would support a shop going forward. The survey, which included South Weston households, returned 58 completed questionnaires – out of the 250 delivered. Of these, only 49 people/households were interested in using the shop; 7 people/households offered management support to a venture; and 21 offered to volunteer/inject funds/buy shares in a community enterprise. Looking at these results realistically, the viability of a shop is small - there really does need to be considerably more than 49 people for a community enterprise to have a chance of succeeding.
Additionally, since the survey was collected and results analyzed, SOHA has found a prospective tenant who is keen to take on the lease and move in very quickly. This has meant that there is not enough time to fully explore the viability and practicalities of setting up a community project. In order to do this we would need to call another meeting and find someone keen enough and with enough time and energy to get funding together and organize staffing. As this does not look likely at present, a decision has been made that the prospective tenant should be encouraged to take the lease, but at the end of each term there would be an opportunity to review the situation, in case a community shop becomes more of a real possibility at future date.
So for the foreseeable future there will not be a Village Shop in Lewknor, but for those who value the ability to buy groceries locally, a good alternative is the Mobile shop that comes to Lewknor on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday each week. More details of how to contact Gary and what is available are contained in the advert in this copy of Grapevine.
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Oxfordshire County Council Trading Standards Service is calling on operators of bouncy castles to carry out safety reviews after tests revealed potential hazards.
Oxfordshire Trading Standards has discovered that children’s safety may be being compromised by poor operator practice.
Trading standards hired bouncy castles and an expert examined their design and set-up looking for safety risks. All four were found to have areas where safety could have been improved, although none were considered to have serious safety defects requiring immediate action.
Safety problems found included:
A bouncy castle was set up indoors but no safety mats were provided, meaning that a child bouncing off the edge would land on an unprotected hard floor.
None of the bouncy castles were anchored correctly to the ground. On two of the bouncy castles, the stakes holding the castle were not driven into the ground far enough which created a potential tripping hazard. On one bouncy castle the stakes used were the wrong length, which meant on dry, chalky soil they could work loose. Another bouncy castle had too few anchorage points and another had anchorage points tied with a rope, which put extra stress on the anchorage.
The double stitched seam on one bouncy castle had split and as a result only a single layer of stitching was in place. The electric blower used to inflate one of the castles was powered from extension cables normally intended for indoor use. These were used outside in wet conditions. None of the hire companies used a circuit breaker, which would have been best practice given the wet conditions and use of electric power.
Oxfordshire Trading Standards assessed the safety of the bouncy castles by working in partnership with The Performance Textiles Association, which administers the PIPA scheme for testing and inspecting inflatable play equipment.
Operators working under the PIPA scheme have their bouncy castles tested annually to ensure continuing safety. However, this is a voluntary scheme and only two out of more than 20 bouncy castle operators in Oxfordshire participate in the scheme.
Nigel Strick, Head of Oxfordshire Trading Standards said: “There are 4,000 reported accidents involving children on inflatable play equipment each year. These range from minor injuries resulting from the nature of the activity to serious head injuries and even fatalities.
“Operators can reduce the likelihood of injuries occurring by ensuring they follow basic safety procedures. Some of the potential safety hazards we found could easily be eliminated and we will be contacting operators to reinforce the need to be continually vigilant with these items.”
County Councillor Ray Jelf, Cabinet Member for Community Safety said: “Inflatable play equipment is normally very safe and a good way for children to exercise and have fun. However, poorly designed, poorly maintained or badly worn equipment can increase the risk of injury for users.
“Whilst we are pleased that no serious safety hazards were found, there is clear scope for improvement”.
Ken Lawrence, who carried out the testing on behalf of Oxfordshire Trading Standards and the Performance Textiles Association said: “Safety starts with the manufacturer but the theme must be carried on by the hire companies and operators if we are to reduce the number and severity of accidents on bouncy castles”.
Oxfordshire Trading Standards has now advised the bouncy castle operators of the expert’s findings and will be sending further advice to all other inflatable play equipment operators.
Anyone hiring a bouncy castle can call Oxfordshire Trading Standards for safety advice and tips on: 0845 051 0845.
For further information contact Richard Webb, Group Manager for Community Safety on 01865 815791 or 07831 161996 or Jody Kerman, Enforcement Officer on 01865 815394.
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Our book for July was “ The Lovely Bones “ by Alice Sebold introduced on 4 July appropriately by Kate, our temporary American member. We celebrated the date on a hot summer evening drinking Pimm’s whilst Kate was able to translate some of the American descriptions in the book, for instance, a cornfield is one of maize or mealies in the States rather than one of wheat as in Britain. This was important as we had all wondered how the murderer could have dug an underground hide-out without the disturbance of the soil being immediately visible in a uniform field of wheat.
The book is an unusual one in that the narrator is the young murdered girl. She is able to visit her family from heaven and report on events in their lives without being able to influence them. She sees the breakdown in the relationship between her parents, her mother abruptly leaving, and follows the growing up of her younger siblings with a pang of regret for the life she will never experience for herself.
The combination of heat and alcohol that evening led to an interesting discussion of our ideas of heaven and we reached a consensus that heaven was an individual construct for each of us. I share Jean Paul Sartre’s idea of hell, however, of being in the same room as three other people for infinity!
August’s book was very different- the War Diaries of Field Marshall Lord Alan brooke 1939 to 1945. At over 700 pages this took some reading! However, this daily diary written by the author committing his innermost thoughts to paper provided a candid portrait of all the famous and infamous people, civilian & soldier, he met during the war years. Sometime later he returned to annotate his comments and frankly admits that his judgement had been awry on some occasions and seeks to put the record straight. The book provides an intimate portrait of a steadfast man who carried the enormous responsibility of being Chief of the Imperial General Staff for most of the Second World War who was an avid birdwatcher but also paradoxically enjoyed shooting game birds.
For September. we are reading Ian McEwan’s book “Saturday” which was nominated for the Mann Booker prize in 2004. and in October, “ Stardust” by Neil Gaiman, an author we have not read before.
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Because of the closure of Weston Road (see elsewhere in the issue) it will not be possible to run the 124 Bus through South Weston for three weeks beginning 18 September. The bus will still serve Lewknor but then have to proceed to Postcombe via the B4009 and A4020 (aka the A40).
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Fresh Fruit and Berries
Everyone knows the value of eating plenty of fresh fruit and what could be better than getting some of it from your own garden! The boom in growing edible plants is set to continue and it’s easy to see why. Good for the body and soul, fresh fruit packed with vitamins will feed your sense of well-being and reinforce your connection with nature in a way that shop-bought never could.
Children love home-grown fruit so it’s a great way of making the ‘five day’ rule part of everyone’s lives at home. Planting, feeding and picking are also great activities to get youngsters involved in. Even a handful of bushes or a couple of small trees will soon yield good crops with the right care. Before you know it you will be making jams and crumbles as well as enjoying fruit fresh from the garden.
So where do you start if you want to bring this rewarding element into your garden? To begin with, you don’t need acres of space. Even a balcony or patio can be home to a blackcurrant, gooseberry or redcurrant in an attractive pot. With a little more space to spare, raspberries and blackberries will thrive in most garden situations and can work very well along fences or against existing hedging plants.
Modern varieties don’t take up a lot of space and can be very attractive too (think opf the wonderful blossom). Pears, apples or damsons (often referred to as ‘top fruit’) are all possibilities. Some apples and pears can be trained up walls and are therefore very space efficient. Remember both need a sunny position, ideally with some protection from frost.
When you go to buy your fruit trees and bushes, as well as checking soil and situation needs, look at the range and what each offers in the way of fruiting time, weight of crop and flavour characteristics. Plant breeding is such that you can enjoy many fruits for more than a few short weeks in autumn, though that’s when most top fruit will crop. For effective pollination of apples and pears, (essential for a crop) make sure that you buy two different varieties that flower at the same time.