Tackley Newsletter
June & July 2018

Contents

Parish Council

Les Summers on behalf of Tackley Parish Council

Members

The clerk is Janette Read.

Responsibilities

Meetings

The next formal meeting of the council is on 11 June, preceded by a surgery on 4 June. All meetings commence at 7 pm. Should there be matters of concern between these dates please contact the parish clerk or councillors.

Draft minutes of all meetings appear on tackleyvillage.co.uk two weeks after the date of the meeting.

Copies of this report are also circulated via Tackley Notices emails (subscribe on the same website).

Data Protection

As residents may be aware, the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on 25 May 2018. Tackley Parish Council takes this opportunity to let you know that it will continue to keep data secure. Details of the updates to data protection policies can be found on Tackley Notices after 25 May.

Pot Holes

Your council is aware that pot holes in roads are becoming a serious problem. Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) Highways informs us that they have purchased machines that should speed up their repair, but residents should continue to report them, again and again if necessary.

Annual Footpath Fortnight

If you are interested, this is planned for the two weeks from 18 June to 1 July. For more details please see the back cover of this newsletter. Please do join a walk, find a footpath you did not know existed, and have a good time as well.

Playground

It has come to our attention that there has been some significant damage done to the footpaths in the playground. Please can you make sure your children do not dig in these paths. They are specifically designed with a hard core base covered in a durable, compacted topping, suitable for wheelchairs, as the playground was designed with inclusivity at its core. Thank you for your vigilance!

Traffic Calming Measures

Consultation and discussion on this matter is ongoing.

Bus Shelter at the Village Hall Entrance

Your council has agreed to the erection of a bus shelter at the village hall stop and to make improved traffic arrangements at this place. In order to accommodate the shelter it will be necessary for the stop on the village hall side – that is, for services in the direction of Kidlington and Oxford – to be moved to the other side of the entrance. It is anticipated that this work will be completed during August.

St Nicholas Road Water Overflow

Dry weather has meant that this has now receded, but there is still a potential problem because Thames Water disputes the cause of the overflow. The matter is under active discussion with OCC.

Damaged Verges

Gigaclear will start work in the very near future to repair those verges damaged by its vehicles.

British Red Cross

Diana Whitehead

A very big thank-you to the collectors and all those who so kindly contributed to the house-to-house collection, which totalled £552.52. This supports vulnerable people in Oxfordshire through our independent living services, emergency response and first aid training.

Nail Painting

Abbie and Fearne

We would like to say a very big thank-you for the funds raised by our nail painting at the recent plant sale. The total of £32.68 will be split between The Cure Parkinson’s Trust and the British Heart Foundation.

Breakfast on the Heath

Dave & Judy Robson

What a fantastic morning it was. The weather was perfect and the setting superb; nothing could have been better. We had the most people ever join in the breakfast – approximately 330 – and everyone seemed to have a good time.

Donations of just over £400 were collected (thank you to Father Robin and his very able young assistant for doing the collection). Of this, £110 was donated to Thames Valley Air Ambulance, and £110 to Help for Heroes. The remainder covered the cost of charcoal and, as some of the BBQs are showing their age and will need to be replaced, we retained a further small sum towards a new one for next year.

We would like to give particular thanks to Jane and Pete Walker for their unending support, and to warmly welcome what we hope will be new members of the team for future breakfasts on the heath: Mark Calkin, Steve, Tony, Carl and Robert who came and helped set up the day before and clear everything away the day after. Special thanks also to Dave, who was on the heath at 7 am (he doesn’t see that time very often) to light the BBQs and make sure they were ready for cooking at 9 o’clock, which he did most successfully. We look forward to handing even more responsibility over to the new team on 6 May 2019, which will mark the 30th anniversary of the event.

Gardiner Arms

Martin Perrin

Spring at the Gardiner Arms has proved, so far, to be lots of fun. The beer garden has been blooming, the wisteria looking beautiful, and it is a lovely place to come and socialise and enjoy the sun.

Live Music

In April, the band The Hellcats brought us lots of well-known 50s and 60s numbers to sing and dance along to — which indeed we did!

Bank holiday weekend was great at the pub. The well-loved The Band Next Door performed for us on the Saturday night, and we had record numbers of visitors choosing to eat and drink with us over the weekend.

Open Mic Evenings

On 18 May we had our third open mic night, hosted by Equal Numbers, which – as previously – was great! These evenings seem to bring to us some excellent talent. We found our tenth slot for the Tackley Beer Festival: a fantastic singer and guitar player John Jackson has agreed to fill our last gap for the live music schedule.

Beer Festival

We are now pushing ahead with our campaign to tell everyone about the Tackley Beer Festival. This is to take place on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 June from noon. Entry is free.

The musicians that we have booked are all excellent, and the sound system we have organised is really good quality. So the music will be something of which Tackley can be proud.

There will be an all-day BBQ on each day, organised by Tackley Village Hall, and a pizza van. There will be gin and cider bars in addition to a large range of local ales on tap.

Free parking in Hill Court — donations welcome. There will be camping in the paddock opposite the pub.

Please tell everyone you know about the festival and help us to put Tackley on the map!

Photographic Calendar

Mary McIntyre

I took over coordinating the Tackley photographic calendar four years ago. It’s a lot of work, but it is always very rewarding seeing the finished result and handing over the donation to Tackley Village Memorial Hall. However, sales have been dropping and it has become increasingly difficult to raise sponsorship from local businesses to help towards our first print run. Most people hated the 2017 calendar and extremely poor sales reflected that. However, the 2018 calendar showcases our village beautifully, and all the feedback I received was extremely positive. Despite that, sales were still very low and I was left with lots of unsold calendars. So I was faced with a dilemma: it takes a lot more work to put this together than you might think, so it is worth it for such low sales? After a lot of thought, I’ve decided that I won’t abandon the project just yet. However, I will need to do things slightly differently this year.

Firstly, the 2019 calendar will not have a specific theme; you can submit any photo of your favourite things about Tackley. It could be a garden display, landscapes, architecture, or animals and wildlife. Whatever Tackley means to you, take a photo of it and submit it to me via email, a file-sharing system, or on a USB stick or memory card. The deadline for submissions will be 18 August.

In order to prevent us having lots of unsold calendars again, I will need to get a rough count of how many people want to buy calendars before I organise the printing. I usually do this via the village email notices system, but if you’re not on the email mailing list, please drop me an email to let me know how many calendars you want. As with previous years, all profits will go to Tackley Village Memorial Hall.

In terms of sponsorship, in the current economic climate it’s very difficult to get the full first print donation from one company, so I want to try and get a number of smaller donations from local businesses in Tackley. If you run a company here in the village and are interested in donating, please contact me. I need to raise £200 to cover the cost of the first print run. Without that, I need to sell 30 calendars before I make a penny of profit, so every little donation will help. In return for the sponsorship I can include a flier with the calendar plus information about your business on the back page.

If you have any further comments or questions, please contact me.

Exhibition: Tackley Through Time

Deb Ollman
Woman addressing an audience in a church.
Sylvia Reddington opening the Tackley Through Time exhibition

What a fascinating afternoon we spent at St Nicholas’ Church on Saturday, 21 April, the opening day of the Tackley Through Time exhibition. The Tackley Local History Group has clearly put a huge amount of work into sorting and presenting an exciting sample of the wealth of historical information we hold collectively in the village.

Before we even entered the church we could hear happy sounds of chatter and teacups. Lots of people filled the aisles, perusing the displays and sharing stories. As a relative newcomer to the village, but with the responsibility of raising children who are now Tackley born and bred, I loved seeing the old photos and artefacts and learning about the people who shaped the village before we arrived.

The timeline in the south porch was particularly interesting. We could see that Nethercott, where we first settled about 15 years ago, was first recorded in the 1340s — the time of the Black Death in the Middle Ages.

Also of note were the daily log books from the old school in Tackley. These records of mostly insignificant news were like a historical Twitter feed; the handwritten fountain pen entries almost as unintelligible to modern children as an iPhone would have been to pupils of the time!

It was striking that all the items we saw were simply normal, everyday things that were well-used by people who lived here before us — be that in the Bronze Age or the 1920s. It brings home the fact that each of us has a role in our community, and what we do now will one day become history to others.

Thank you to the Tackley Local History Group for putting on such a marvellous display and to Tackley’s residents for making the village the fantastic place it is today.

The exhibition is in the south porch of the church and is open every day from 10 am to 5 pm. The 24-page full-colour guide to the exhibition, as well as additional information on the history of farming in Tackley, is available in the church. Copies of the guide, Tackley Through Time, are available for £8 from the village shop or Sue Ashton. For more on Tackley Local History Group, see their article in this newsletter and visit tackleyhistory.org.uk.

Primary School

Mrs L. J. Murrey, Headteacher

The weather has certainly become more spring-like, and it has been good to see some sunshine recently. Hopefully it will stay with us for what is always a really busy summer term.

Our Summer Fete, held jointly with St Nicholas’ Church, is on Saturday, 7 July. Our PTA have promised me it will be as entertaining as always, full of stalls and games to keep all members of your family busy.

We have had a busy spring term with our Year 5 and 6 children embarking on their final residential visit. The snow cut it short, but they are making up for this with a bonus weekend at Yenworthy in June.

Our Year 3 and 4 children are off to Dorchester Abbey in June to sing in the Festival of Voices, and are busy learning a whole repertoire of songs.

In March a group of our children represented Tackley Primary School at a Primary Pops Concert. Several sang solos and made us very proud.

Medcroft class and Nethercote class had visits to the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Science in Oxford. They had action-packed days, and came back from their visits bursting with new knowledge that they have shared with us all.

St Nicholas’ Church

Rev Marcus Green

Anyone who knows me at all well knows that I’m not a gardener. I mean, I can mow a lawn. And I am learning to get rid of brambles — on a painfully regular basis. I’ve even planted a couple of trees since I moved here.

But no one’s accusing me of being a gardener. Especially as I come to some of your gardens and see what you get up to.

I blame my grandmother. When I was a kid, we had a mess of rose bushes in our front garden, always choked up with weeds, and when my grandmother was feeling frustrated or cross with me, my punishment was to be sent out there to get rid of the weeds. It scarred me for life…

The Bible, of course, says that you are right and I am wrong. Gardens are always terrific places in the Bible. The first garden, Eden, is a place of pure joy; of walking unafraid with each other and with God in a place of beauty and safety. After the crucifixion, the risen Jesus is first seen again not in a tomb but in the garden nearby. A place of life and wonder, not death. Jesus even says of God, in John’s Gospel, “My Father is the gardener”.

So I’m always grateful when people take the time to show me their love for creation and the results of their hard work. I’m always in awe of people who know what they are doing – whether it’s the Tackley Gardening Club or the open gardens weekend in Steeple Aston at the start of June – though I’m going to miss that as I have been invited away to a dear friend’s book launch. And I must thank those who have already taken pity on me and given me sneak previews of their gardens this year… though you’ll understand that my ambition to copy the wonders I’ve seen is small. I’ll stick to my lawnmower and cutting back the brambles for now.

Mentioning that book launch, I should add: I have a book of my own coming up. Publishing theology makes no one rich, though I do hope my book The Possibility of Difference may make a few folk happy when it comes out courtesy of Kevin Mayhew publishers in September. I’ll say more then!

As we move into July, the village fete takes our attention. It’s wonderful to be doing this again with the PTA from the school. The fete is a terrific family event, whatever the weather. Let’s hope for sunshine, but all the work our committee has put in will make sure that once again we will have a wonderful day and I hope that everyone will come along and support this fantastic occasion. Sure, it’s vital in our church’s year from a fundraising point of view (thank you in advance!) but, more than that, like so many events, it’s a time when we enjoy being a village family, coming together in this beautiful place; this garden paradise where we are so lucky to live, enjoying the day and each other’s company. Sometimes it’s easy to be like me and gardens with such occasions — to feel a bit like we ought to go, without really enjoying them.

If you are anything like me, then I think perhaps we both have something to learn from our gardening friends!

There is a trick in having an eye to see beauty in the gifts around us. Let’s take every chance we can this summer to have such an eye and to see such beauty — and to be grateful to God for it all.

Methodist Church

Tim Bailey

Olive Richardson

It was with great sadness that we said goodbye to Olive Richardson, a member of the church since she moved to Tackley from Luton. Olive was always ready to be part of any activities or projects in which the church was involved, showing commitment and loyalty. The number attending her thanksgiving service showed how much she was loved and appreciated by friends both local and further afield. Her strong Christian faith was central to her life, and we will miss her.

Messy Church

Messy Church is held from 2:30 to 4:30 pm on the first Saturday of every month except August. A variety of games and craft activities are available for all ages. No entry fee is charged but donations are welcomed to cover the costs of the materials provided.

Refreshments are available, and food is sometimes provided by the church and on other occasions is ‘bring and share’.

The theme for June is Jonah and the Whale and for July it is Picnics.

Changing Times at Features

John Newton

We live in changing times. If you have a computer, you will no doubt have been inundated by companies asking you to confirm your continued use of their product. Regulation is certainly overdue but it has given thousands of people running small organisations, charities or interest groups a few headaches. I’m one — so my sympathies to everyone, data controllers and users.

Why mention this? By the time you read this, I hope the majority of people who receive Features mail shots will have confirmed that they want to continue to find out what we are showing, and I thank you very much for this. For some, my tardiness in producing the background systems in time will mean they will have lost their mail shots. I do apologise for this — to resume receiving them, please use the link at features.org.uk.

Times are changing at Features too. Actually, times and days are changing. From 8 July until further notice, Features will be on the second Sunday of every month at the new time of 7 pm. We hope these changes meet with support. If you haven’t been because Fridays were difficult, please check us out on a Sunday.

Our first film is an original musical, which has been astonishingly successful. It celebrates the birth of show business and tells of a visionary, P. T. Barnum, who rose from nothing to create a worldwide sensation.

The wonderful Paddington 2 and two films based on true stories, Molly’s Game and Darkest Hour, are all queuing to be shown at a second Sunday during the summer.

Thank you again for your support and your support for the charities we support.

Gardening Club

Mary Lee

Spring is well and truly here and we had a great day with our plant sale, raising just under £200.

June is the members-only garden party, to be held this year at Sue Pitts’. I will be contacting members to see who is coming and what dish you can contribute to the evening.

On 18 July we have another trip to Ball Colegrave at Adderbury. For those interested, please be in the car park by 5:30 pm; it’s only open until 8 pm.

In the meantime, good luck with your tubs, baskets and borders: we hope to see the fruits of your labours at the flower show in August.

Local History Group

Sue Ashton

Our programme for the autumn, winter and spring is as follows:

Walking Group

Linda Birch

Meet at Tackley Village Hall at the time shown to arrange car sharing; please contact the walk leader if you would rather meet at the start of the walk. Some walks conclude with lunch at a local pub or cafe; please contact the leader if you will be joining us for lunch. Most walks are circular. Walking is at your own risk.

Late Spring

Bec Hoare

Tackley’s new Late Spring group met twice in May, in the Methodist Chapel. We have enjoyed meeting one another and chatting over tea, coffee and cake.

The group aims to offer support in a friendly and relaxed setting to those who have been bereaved. It can be helpful and reassuring to know that others have shared similar experiences, and that you are not alone.

Tackley Late Spring meetings take place on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 1:30 pm. Upcoming dates are 14 June, 28 June, 12 July and 26 July.

If you have been bereaved, and would like to meet with others who understand, please do consider coming along. It does not matter whether your bereavement was recent or a long time ago. Everyone will be very welcome!

If you would like to have a chat to find out more before coming along, please give me a call.

PALs Litter Pick

Dave & Judy Robson

We signed up for the Keep Britain Tidy campaign to ‘help rid the country of the plastic that litters our best-loved beaches, beauty spots and city streets’ and joined in on 12 May.

Ten years ago, the Daily Mail launched a trail-blazing campaign to end the scourge of plastic bags clogging the oceans. Since then, there has been a staggering 85 per cent reduction in the number of bags used in Britain. The manufacture of microbeads is banned, supermarkets are vowing to eliminate single-use packaging, and plastic bottle cashback schemes are being considered across the country. And in our small way, we are helping to make a difference by collecting litter locally and disposing of it safely.

A big thank-you to those who came and helped this time. We had fourteen people – ages ranging from 4 to 91 – out picking litter. We focused on picking and sorting the litter into plastic bottles, metal drinks cans, glass bottles, and the rest of the rubbish. The recyclable material was put into the recycling bins at the playing field. West Oxfordshire District Council supports our efforts by providing the plastic bags we use on the litter pick, and by collecting the rest of the rubbish when we have finished. Further bottles and cans came from Breakfast on the Heath, where people kindly put them separately in bags for us and we were able to recycle them along with those we collected.

We hope to continue sorting the rubbish and recycling as much as possible, and we are told that:

So, hopefully we are playing our part in helping preserve the environment and our wildlife.

As the grass verges are now so overgrown, and therefore the litter almost impossible to see, we have arranged for the next litter pick to be early in September as the verges should be cut by then.

We look forward to seeing all our usual members and hopefully more new ones then, and we will send a reminder nearer the time.

Thank you very much to all who collect litter in and around the village at the litter pick and at other times when you are out and about.

NatWest Kidlington

Martin Edwards

It could be said that modern life, with its rolling news and social media, is making us numb to tragedy. But in its own small way, the closure of NatWest in Kidlington (13 June) is nothing short of tragic.

I called in there today to pay in a cheque from an elderly customer. That same demographic is, of course, one who particularly appreciates a high street bank. But don’t let anyone tell you they’re the only ones.

Naturally, as a thirty-something-year-old computer technician, I bank online. I’ve got the app. I can take card payments using a slow Bluetooth thing that’s always running out of battery. I’ll carefully dictate my sort code and account number to those willing to set up a new payee on a website (sometimes after I’ve cleaned malware from their computer, if they’re not too shaken by it). Heck, I’ll even stoop to PayPal if I have to. But often I take cheques — my customers love them, and so do I.

On a recent visit, the self-service machine was unavailable, so I queued for a cashier, which gave me a chance to fully appreciate the place. NatWest Kidlington is warm and friendly. It has a powered door for those who need it. It’s spacious and has comfortable seats. It has free coffee. It has two thriving community noticeboards. It has a box selling sweets for a charity donation. At Christmas, it even has a tree. And most importantly, it has polite, patient, highly competent staff.

Not many staff, I should add — it’s a small branch. Its running costs must be a negligible fraction of RBS’s total. And of course you can’t quantitively compare its running costs to the benefit and peace of mind it brings to local customers plus the livelihoods of the staff. These aren’t numbers, they’re people. And this is a bank which, not long ago, was bailed out by the taxpayer and whose primary purpose is surely to serve ordinary people. Its closure is a tragedy.

The Lonely Letter Box

Peter Gayton

Claire Gregory wonders where the letter box at White Hill has gone.
Her late father wrote this story for her children when they were young.

Watercolour painting

Near the brow of the hill stood the lonely Letter Box. To left and right the narrow lane curved away downwards. In front, a rough farm track soon disappeared behind trees. Whichever way he looked there were no buildings, no farms — not even a cottage.

Occasionally, in the distance, he saw a farm tractor or a combine harvester, but it sometimes seemed that the fields had been cultivated by magic while he slept.

In the autumn the wind blew and the rain splashed around him. In the winter soft snowflakes settled silently, hiding the road and the fields, and forming a white hat on his head.

Watercolour painting

The Letter Box grew lonelier. For almost a year he had not felt the satisfying thump of a letter falling inside him. He thought that he had been forgotten.

Only one event broke his isolation. On weekdays the postman came, opened his door with a shiny key, and then slammed it shut when he saw that the box was empty yet again. Angrily he would drive away, muttering about wasting his time.

Week followed week until one day the postman fixed a notice to the side of the Letter Box. ‘Collections from this post box will be discontinued at the end of the month’ — he read aloud, not realising the Letter Box could understand.

The Letter Box was sad remembering his busy days when many people passed by on their way to work in the fields. Now the farms were mechanised and the people had moved into the town. Only occasional cars passed by, choking him in clouds of dust.

The next day, as the Letter Box dozed in the early spring sunshine, a car stopped nearby. The driver looked at a map and then drove slowly down the track opposite. When the man and the woman returned they were smiling and excited. The Letter Box was puzzled.

During the next week there were more cars and then a lorry loaded with wood, sand, cement and a concrete mixer. Despite the threat of closure the Letter Box felt his spirits rise.

Each morning he listened for the lorry. First he would hear the engine gradually growing louder, then the grinding of gears as the lorry reached the steepest part of the hill, and finally as it came into view the whistling of the men perched on the back. Time passed more quickly and he looked forward to each new day. He had almost forgotten the unseen notice on his outside.

One Monday morning, after the weekend quiet, the Letter Box strained his ears to hear the approaching lorry. For a long time he heard nothing, then the purr of a car engine and the high-pitched voices of children. He recognised the car, which confidently turned down the track opposite followed by a large removal van.

The Letter Box was thoughtful. That evening he saw the van go away, but although he watched until long after dark, the car did not.

In the morning the tired Letter Box slept late. He woke with a start as letters showered through his mouth. Children’s voices talked about their plans to explore the surrounding countryside. The old farmhouse, out of sight down the track, had been bought and renovated. Once more it was a family home. The letters were to tell friends of their new address. After being neglected for so long the Letter Box could hardly believe his luck.

When the postman arrived the Letter Box stood alone on the hill, the closure notice faded and torn. It was the last day of the month. Imagine the postman’s surprise when he found the pile of letters!

As the postman turned away, the Letter Box sighed. He was happy again.