Letters to the Editors
Land-girls Reunited
Dear Editors,
We were pleased to read the fascinating article on Sid Prince and to see the copy of the Land Army Reunion photograph. This was taken on the drive in front of Swaffham Prior House on 29th June 1985 when we invited back as many as could be contacted of the young girls who were billeted in Swaffham Prior House during World War Two. They had been conscripted to work on the land as part of the war effort. Some came from Liverpool and London. It was a very happy Saturday afternoon tea party gathering, and 'the girls' explored the rooms in which they had slept and told many tales of the mischief they had got up to and of the tough regime to which they were subjected! As many as possible got into our old tractor and trailer for the photograph. We repeated this some years later, but numbers were already reducing through old age!! If anyone is still in touch with the surviving members and would like to organise a further reunion to celebrate 60 years since the end of the War, please contact us and we'll be delighted to see them again.
Ladies Indulgence Evening
Dear Editors,
On behalf of The Friends of Swaffham Prior School, I would like to thank the many villagers who so generously supported two of our events recently.
At the Ladies Indulgence Evening on May 22nd the village hall was completely transformed by metres of silk, soft lights, candles and flowers which provided an atmosphere of luxury that everyone enjoyed.
The Evening was a wonderful opportunity to relax with friends over a glass of wine, enjoy a massage and partake of a little retail therapy and we raised the fantastic sum of £660.
Many of you also supported the Barrow of Booze Prize Draw which took place at Reach Fair. Tickets sold during the week before, and also at the fair resulted in a total of £991 being raised.
These amounts put us well on track to be able to provide the second phase of the Trim Trail for the playground.
Many thanks to you all,
Flak, not flack
Dear Editors,
Before getting more flak (Yes. Flak, not flack) I must confess that the name of a well-known political party in my piece last month was quite wrong.
This should, of course, have read DemLib.
Bonfires
Dear Editors,
It was a beautiful May Bank Holiday. It was quarter to nine in the evening, and the first star hung in a cloudless sky. I'd've liked to have sat out in my garden to enjoy it, but it was not cloudless down here. Instead, a pall of heavy smoke hung over the bottom of Fairview Grove and the whole of the Beeches. We had to close the windows, take the washing in, and our neighbours couldn't put theirs out.
When I located the source, I was gobsmacked. The most enormous bonfire - several square metres of unattended burning damp greenstuff, bigger than I have ever lit in my life, next to a footpath in the corner of a very big garden behind Fairview Grove, pouring smoke horizontally and downhill across to our homes. Way beyond, where there was no smoke, the light of its owner's tv flickered distantly in their windows.
'Holiday' once meant Holy Day - a special day in the year. Not tonight it wasn't.
This has been discussed before so we know rational debate won't convince them. Could we therefore request of the bonfire people to undertake this simple action? Once you've lit it, just go downwind and see what it's like. If you don't enjoy the experience, you can be certain people who live there won't be happy either. Worse for them, they don't have the option of putting a hosepipe to it or to go upwind to a smoke-free home. Therefore it is unreasonable to let it continue. It's not a lot to ask.
And if you enjoy your bonfire enough to light it, keep it company. Please don't walk off and leave it to smoke over the rest of us for hours.
WELL!! Surely last month's correspondent asked "if only bonfires could be set in the evening, when our washing is taken in...". Anyhow, by one of those strange coincidences, just as I finished writing this note, I found the following in the Crier in-tray...
Fireworks and Monstrous Trees
Dear Editor,
The other night I retired to bed unaccountably early only to be awoken by the most humungous bangs and whoops of FIREWORKS from a nearby large garden not our own. Worse, the junior department round here could not be persuaded to flicker an eyelid, and so missed this spectacular display.
I would not mind, were it not for the fact that during the day I am further beset by a sunlight-snaffling monster row of 60 foot Leylandii in another nearby garden, well ours, as it happens. Meaning we'll have to cut them down and burn them, on an extremely big bonfire, but then what? Monstrous sacks full of complaining letters, that's what!
What is this village coming to?