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Hothfield News Volume 4 No. 4 April 2013
The Monthly Newsletter by the Community, for the Community
Aunt Jemima’s Philosophy Of Housecleaning
I don't do windows because I love birds and don't want one to run into a clean window and get hurt.
I don't polish floors because I am terrified a guest will slip and get hurt then I'll feel terrible (plus they may sue me).
I don't mind the dust bunnies under the bed because they are very good company, I have named most of them, and they agree
with everything I say.
I don't disturb cobwebs because I think every creature should have a home of its own.
I don't Spring Clean because I love all the seasons and don't want the others to get jealous.
I don't pull weeds in the garden because I don't want to get in God's way, surely He must know what He’s doing.
I don't put things away because my husband will never be able to find them again.
I don't do gourmet meals when I entertain because I don't want my guests to stress out over what to make when they invite
me over for dinner.
I don't iron because I choose to believe them when they say "Permanent Press".
It's astonishing how seldom people from round here do their shopping in France. At various times of year, day trips are available around £20 for a car and up to 9 passengers, which you can easily save on a remarkably small quantity of drinks. In fact, P&O regularly offer a day trip for that sort of price and throw in six free bottles of wine, which is practically paying you to go. Even Eurotunnel, which can often cost a lot more than the ferries, runs cheap day trips from time to time, often during half-term holidays. Crossing takes 40 minutes in the tunnel, 90 on a ferry. Once there, you can shop in vast hypermarkets or in wonderful open-air markets, get quality food or inexpensive jewellery, and have a good lunch for far less than it costs here.
Of course, you can come up with lots of reasons for not making the trip. Like, for instance:
It takes too long. Last week your Editor dropped his wife off at work, drove to
Dover, caught the ferry, collected his free wine, had a nice lunch, spent a couple of hours shopping, and got back in time to pick the worker up. It doesn't take too long at all.
I don't speak French Well, how much English do you speak in a supermarket?
Everything's labelled, and if you have to ask for something at a market, the word 'kilo' is the same in both languages.
The French are rude. Only if you are. Make the slightest effort to speak French,
however few words, however hopeless, and they suddenly become the most helpful of people. Shout at them in English and they clam up, just as somebody in an English shop would if somebody started going on at them in French.
Euros aren't as cheap as they were. No, but the difference in taxes hasn't changed. Whatever the
exchange rate, some things are always going to cost less abroad. I buy wine, cider, coffee and sugar lumps; and the Auchan hypermarket in Calais has a really useful section where you can get loose coffee, pasta, cornflakes, popping corn and the like at ridiculously low prices. And they take British credit or debit cards everywhere.
They drive on the wrong side of the road. Well, yes. But it's not as difficult as all that, especially as
the first mile out of the port, and all the way to most hypermarkets, is on dual carriageways. Just go with the flow. You'll see lots of Brits managing perfectly well.
My car isn't insured for Abroad. Check your policy. Most car insurance nowadays extends
to Europe for at least 30 days a year. So why not give it a try? It's a good day out, and it
needn't cost you a penny! You can check for offers and book crossings on line, and get details of where the shops are from sites like www.calais-guide.co.uk. Don't go on a Sunday, though; most shops close at midday.
Over There ...
Hothfield News is edited, printed and published by Hedley Grenfell-Banks and distributed by a dedicated band of volunteers. Email: [email protected], telephone 01233 629568. Available on line in colour at www.hothfield.org.uk.
The deadline for the May 2013 issue is 20 April. Letters and articles for publication are always welcome.
Advertising is free to businesses working in, or for, the Parish of Hothfield. Email the Editor for information on advertising prices for outside companies.
New Photo Website In most months, we have more photographs of the village and
village events than will fit into the newsletter. However, if you go online to www.hothfieldnews.org.uk, you will find ‘Hothfield in Pictures‘, where there are literally hundreds of photographs for your delectation.
Charing & District
Local History Society Cadnam Event 2013
Saturday May 18th
9am to approx. 5.45pm.
£17members/£20 non-members
Visit to Ramsgate to see
St Augustine's Church and
The Grange, built by Augustus Pugin.
We can see over the whole house, and
will have a tour of the church.
Lunch (not provided) in Ramsgate
town with drop off and pick up by the
Maritime Museum, which some
might like to visit.
The coach will then take us to Manston
for a short visit to the
RAF Spitfire & Hurricane
Memorial Museum.
We will finish with cream teas provided
by the Monkton WI.
Gardeners’ Competition
8 June 2013
As promised, here are further details of the above competition.
The categories will be:
Best small village garden, Best large village garden, Best Fruit/veg, Best Container Planting, Best Rural Garden
and Best Children's/Young Person’s Garden.
We would especially like to encourage children and young people in the village to think about finding a small plot in someone’s gar-den, or even a large container, and having a go at growing some-
thing, whether it’s flowers, vegetables, herbs or butterfly -friendly plants. There are lots of ideas for planting on the web.
Our judges this year will be Margery Thomas, a professional gar-
dener who also works as a volunteer gardener at Godinton House, and George Sainsbury from Hothfield, a keen gardener who has won
prizes in previous competitions. We would like to point out that as the judging day is a month earlier this year, the judges do not expect everything in your gardens to be
fully grown!
Application forms will be included with May’s newsletter, and we plan to award the prizes at the Village Fête on 30 June.
In the meantime, if you have any queries or require any further
information, please do contact either Peter Howard on 01233 623568 or Penny Sutcliffe on 01233 634191.
March Draw Winners
1 £27.00 95
2 £16.20 42
3 £10.80 21
Hothfield
Heathlands 14th April Spring Clean
Kent Wildlife Trust will be running our regular Spring cleaning task on Sunday 14 April. We will meet in the reserve car park at 10:00am and spend the next few hours clearing up the rubbish that has accumulated over the previous winter.
After cleaning up the reserve (and ourselves) join us for a picnic lunch out on the greatly improved reserve.
Although it’s not the most glamor-ous of jobs, the beginning of April will be a great time of year to spend time wan-dering Hothfield Heathlands. The bluebells on the Triangle should be coming into flower, and bumblebee and butterflies will be making themselves known. There should be a good orchestra of bird song too, as the songbirds vie for their nesting spots across the reserve.
If you would like to join us, please contact me on 07889 737839 or email [email protected] or just turn up on the day.
Ian Rickards
Keep it Clean! I’ve been offering to help with Hothfield’s computers for a
few months now, and without exception the biggest prob-lem any of my customers have had has been that their com-puters need cleaning.
Just like your garage, your car and your house, your com-puter naturally gets cluttered and messy over time. And like your home, that mess can really trip you up!
I'm not talking about a physical mess, although that's a problem too. No, I'm talking about digital dirt. Your hard drive could be filthy with old bits and bytes like cookies, temporary files and other unwanted data. The poor old computer is having to sort through all this junk every time it wants to do something. No wonder it slows down!
Clean it off and improve performance with CCleaner.
This is a free program which makes short work of all the junk. I install it for my customers, and they don’t come back. So I’m doing myself out of work here!
CCleaner can even tidy up your registry. Just remember it's important to backup your data and registry before modifying them in any way. CCleaner automatically offers to backup the registry every time.
You can also use CCleaner for uninstalling unwanted pro-grams; it’s easier to use then the Windows Control Panel method, and seems to list more programs too.
Download from www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download – the free version does everything you need. Once you’ve run it for the first time, you’ll find your computer running faster immediately. You won’t lose any important stuff; it even scans for cookies you need to keep before it starts.
HGB
Saint Margaret's Church
Friends of St. Margaret’s
This month’s
COFFEE MORNING
will be on Tuesday 2 April at Hothfield Village Hall
10.30 to 11.30am.
ALL WELCOME
News from
Ashford
Foodbank We would like to thank all in the G7
Benefice for the overwhelming level of contributions. What has been com-mented on by the Foodbank group is the quality of our contributions. One comment worthy of note was: “It makes our clients feel valued and loved when we are able to slip some-thing nice in their bag. The contribu-tions from G7 have made this possible”
One of the difficulties the Foodbank faces usually comes after Christmas or Lent. The contributions are usually good during these times but fall away afterwards. May we request that our level of contributions is maintained throughout the year?
At a recent churchwardens’ meeting the following question was asked:
Q. “How does someone in need avail themselves of what the Foodbank has to offer?”
A. A voucher holder has been ap-pointed to serve the G7 Benefice. This is someone who will see the family or persons in need in the first instance and assess the need. A voucher may be issued which can be exchanged for food at the food bank. Our voucher holder is Dawn Potter who is the Com-munity Involvement Officer for our area. Dawn can be contacted on 01233 622296 or 07827 870508.
Once again thank you for your sup-port. As Jesus said: “When I was hun-gry you gave me food.”
God bless. Rev Bob Weldon and Dawn Stamper
Who’s who
in the G7 Benefice
Rector
Reverend Sheila Cox
The Vicarage, Pett Lane, Charing,
Kent. TN27 0DL
T: 01233 712598
Benefice Priest
Reverend Bob Weldon
The Vicarage, Eastwell Lane,
Westwell, Kent TN25 4LQ
T: 01233 712576
Assistant Curate
Reverend Sue Starkings
T: 01233 643497 E:
Assistant Priests
Reverend Philip Cox
T: 01233 840274 E: po-
Reverend Richard Webb
T: 01233 714663 E: revrichard-
Services for April
Sunday 7th – Easter 2 11am Eucharist Sunday 14th – Easter 3 11am Holy Communion Sunday 21st – Easter 4 11am Eucharist Sunday 28th – Easter 5 11am – Family Service Every Tuesday Charing Eucharist 9.00 Charing Heath Bible Study 19.00 Wednesday 3rd Charing Heath Eucharist 10.00 Followed by coffee in the Red Lion Friday 5th Westwell Iona Eucharist 10.00 Followed by coffee in the Wheel Inn
Is it slow, lethargic, moody? When you ask it to do something, does it
just whine and say ‘Maybe tomorrow’?
Perhaps it has a nasty virus. But it’s far more likely to
be just indigestion. HGB Services can clean it out and
set it back on its little feet. The first hour will cost you
only £10 – and no callout charge inside Hothfield.
For any sort of computer problem,
just ring 01233 629568.
Computer POORLY ?
Hothfield History Society Hothfield on display at Ashford Museum Ashford Museum, in the church square, re-opens for the
2013 season on 2nd April (they’re not open on Bank Holi-days). Until now the museum has had very little on Hoth-field, but the History Society has erected a small display upstairs on Hothfield’s past.
My thanks to Sheila for helping to put up the display which centres around the Nissen hut stories. We’ve put up a large copy of the aerial photo taken by the RAF in 1946 showing most of the hut camp. There are also photos of some former hut residents and stories from Mike Bates, John Smith and Tim Matthews recalling their days living in the huts, and a newspaper cutting about John and Clare Nicholls.
Ashford museum has also expanded over the winter and now has a large area dedicated to the railway history of the area. The Hothfield display therefore also includes a brief history of Hothfield’s own train station together with a pic-ture of the station and a few examples of train tickets showing Hothfield as a destination.
The museum is free to enter and opens from 11am to 2pm, more details can be found at: www.ashfordmuseum.co.uk The History Society is very grateful to the Museum’s organisers and volunteers for letting us put up the display about your village for 2013. Family History workshops
Our family history workshops for 2013 are now fully booked, and well done to Karen Brock for her support with
these interesting and in-formative sessions. There will be more workshops advertised for 2014 if you’re interested in know-ing more about tracing your family or need help
progressing any research you’re al-ready doing.
Events for 2013: In May we will have our AGM (date
to be confirmed) and I hope to show you how our new websites are pro-gressing. We will also have a public meeting on 22nd July at 7pm in the Village Hall – we’ll let you know about the subject.
Don’t forget that our next Exhibition will be in the Village
Hall on Sunday 27th October where we intend to have the Nis-sen hut stories on prominent display along with new material that we’ve picked up in recent years. We will also be re-cording the memories of residents past and present who would like to share their stories.
Chris Rogers
Sewage plant for
Hothfield? Plans are to be published shortly for a new sewage treat-
ment works in Hothfield. This will process waste from Hoth-field, Little Chart and Westwell parishes and offer the creation of at least 20 new jobs in the village.
‘Hothfield seems an ideal site for this plant’, said a spokes-man from Merdalor, the French firm responsible for the pro-ject. ‘It has a large area of bog, which is no use for farming or building, and screened all round by a belt of trees. The only real disruption will be caused by laying new waste water pipes under Station Road and West Street, but this will be over in a matter of months.’
For further details of this initiative, please telephone 629568, but not after noon on April 1st.
On Sunday 28th April 2013
the Hothfield World Cinema Film Club
proudly presents:
An old shepherd lives his last days in a quiet medieval village perched high on the hills of Calabria, at the southernmost tip of Italy. He herds goats under skies that most villagers have deserted long ago. He is sick, but believes that he can find his medicine in the dust he collects on the church floor, which he drinks in his water every day. A new goat kid is born. We follow its first few tentative steps, its first games, until it gains strength and goes to pasture. Nearby, a majestic tree stirs in the mountain breeze and slowly changes through the seasons, until transformed into fuel through the ancestral work of the local Calabrian charcoal makers. The film also includes some extraordinary and funny natural performances foro animals (goats, and a star turn from a collie dog) and is almost entirely wordless; it is slow, precise, superbly filmed, and with an almost respiratory sense of the rise and fall of the seasons and the rhythm of the countryside. Winner of Best European Film at Cannes 2010, Le Quattro Volte (the Four Times) is a beautiful and poetic vision of the revolving cycles of life and nature in the unbroken traditions of a timeless place, and works both as a sim-ple celebration of nature and as a spiritual exploration of time and space, and our place in the natural world. (no dialogue)
For more info about our club, please go to:
www.hothfieldworldcinema.org.uk The Hothfield World Cinema Film Club meets on the 4th Sun-
day of each month. It is a non-profit organisation founded with
the aim of providing community entertainment and promoting
awareness and appreciation of other countries and cultures,
and is run entirely by volunteers. Any funds collected go to-
wards the costs for hiring and heating the Village Hall, and
paying individual film license fees.
Godinton House & Gardens
Spring must be on its way! The gardens opened on 1st March and visitors
are enjoying the early spring flowers. The corridors of the house are filled
with the delightful smell of baking as we prepare for our first house visi-
tors on 29th March. We are all looking forward to the 2013 season and
hope you are able to visit to enjoy the warmth and tranquillity of Godinton
House & Gardens.
Big Day Out – 6th April Working with Visit Kent to offer FREE tickets to Kent residents for the
glorious gardens.
Develop your Painting Style with local artist Kaidy Lewis A.V.A:
Taking risks when painting flowers
Four week course, 15th April – 13th May
These courses are tailored for adults wanting to become more creative and
confident when painting. Contact Godinton for booking form. To view
artist work visit www.notonthehighstreet.com and search KDLewisart.
Contact Kaidy on 07733070396 or email [email protected]
NCCPG Plant Fair – 21st April, 11am – 5.00pm Supporting Plant Heritage (National Council for the Conservation of
Plants and Gardens). Purchase a variety of plants from over 10 local nurs-
eries. Adult £5.00 entry to plant fair and gardens. Children under 16 free
The Practical Gardener – six week course
Friday 19th April – Friday 24th May, 9.30am 1.30pm
Understand how to get the best from your garden with this six week
course giving hands on, practical experience of essential gardening skills
and the knowledge to make the plants in your garden thrive. With Fiona
Abrahams from Hadlow College. Price £220.00 (lunch not included)
Plants for Places – 27th April, 9.30am – 2.30pm Learn how to assess your garden and choose plants that will thrive in a
variety of situations.
Gardens Open Daily from 2pm – 5.30pm £5.00 (gardens only)
1st March to 31st October.
House Open Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays from
29th March 2013, 2pm – 5.30pm £8.00 (house and gardens)
www.godinton-house-gardens.co.uk
For more information or to book, contact Rachael on 01233 643854
Hothfield
Post
Office
for all your day-to-day needs
Watch out for
Special Offers on Beer,
Wine and Groceries!
The very heart and centre of our village
There's always a welcome
and a friendly face at
Hothfield
Post Office
