What a lovely lot you are! The appeal for more Newsletter boys and girls to help with the distribution resulted in several offers of help within 48 hours – 8 to be precise. A remarkable and most welcome result. So new arrangements have been made and already have come into force. More offers will not be turned away as it is as well to have a couple of stand-bys to cover holidays, sickness, or those unavoidable losses because residents foolishly decide to move away from us!
The
total collected by the Pirbright Branch of the Royal British Legion, to
which Brookwood subscribes, amounted to £7,531.86.
Brookwood shops, Hotel, School and Clubs contributed £405.17. Volunteers from Brookwood helped to draw in £2,208.43 from Sainsbury’s customers and £344.37 was extracted from sleepy eyed commuters as they made their weary way to work in the early hours! See you all next year!
There will be a number of special issues coming up in the year and we need to put our minds to some of them very soon.
1.
February 6th is the anniversary of the Queen’s accession and
what will the Village do to celebrate the Golden Jubilee on 3rd
June? If you’ve got any thoughts, pass them on to the BVA Committee "
toute suite "!
2.
SAWADDEE ! In December one of our 1st
Brookwood Scouts will attend the 20th World Scout Jamboree being held
in Thailand and between now and then has to raise a large part of the
£3,000 it is going to cost to send him there. Why so much? Well, every
Scout going has to help Scouts from less developed countries to take part
and also Scouts who are handicapped who can’t do a lot to raise funds.
So when the Scout Group arrange something in aid of the Jamboree Fund,
make sure you support them (or I won’t talk to you again!) And here he
is busking outside Fulks Butchers shop on Christmas Eve. He sends his
thanks to all who made a contribution and to the shop for their encouragement.
3. Now we don’t quite know what is to happen in terms of a Village Fete. FOBS who have organised it extremely well for the past few years feel it’s time for someone else to take over. One or two possibilities are being aired, we understand, one of which is for all the organisations in the Village to provide a Committee member to play an active part in sorting out the overall fete arrangements and get the show on the road. So get talking about it and have a name ready in case the trumpet call comes!
4. We already know that WBC are very unlikely to put any hanging baskets on the posts they carefully installed in 1999 to brighten up the Village. Shall we go it alone? Would anyone, business or individual care to make up or sponsor a basket for the Spring? Call Mac Fryatt if you are interested. Of course, we shall do our best to squeeze something out of WBC but it’s tough out there!
That’s just a start – get your heads round those items and we’ll find you some more!!
Now a sort of apology!
In late November, by some insidious means, someone introduced a computer virus to the Editor’s computer via his e-mail and "stole" his address book. A series of e-mails purporting to emanate from him were then sent to people on the listing. Most of the recipients were running an automatic virus check which rejected the message but, alas, several did not have this facility (including the Editor) and the virus entered their system too. (It’s a bit like catching a cold - it spreads around!). All those infected should by now have eliminated it and, hopefully, like the Editor, now have a decent virus scan programme constantly on the watch. Mac didn’t know what was happening until a day or two after it struck everyone. His e-mails are now safe!
Residents whose properties abut the Basingstoke Canal and who have had a "Private Garden Licence from the Basingstoke Canal Company at a cost of £10 per annum allowing access to the canal bank have been shocked to learn that Surrey County Council have taken over the administration of the canal and (take a deep breath!) are putting the annual fee up to £75. No proper explanation has been given for the change in responsibilities nor for the need for a 750% increase in the fee. In fact, from the correspondence it seems that all the fees collected by SCC will be paid over to BCC who will continue to manage the canal. So what has actually happened? SCC muscling in on a successful operation? Barrel scraping for funds by the County Finance department? Or is it just another badly thought through, poorly handled and quite unnecessary idea that came up over coffee during elevenses?
The bottle of drinkable wine for Christmas dressing of the house went to the Carnells of West Hill Close. Last year’s winner in Connaught Crescent also did well but – they won last year! Well done everyone, the Village looked very smart.
