Telscombe

HALLOWEEN PARTY: Children’s Halloween Party on Saturday October 28, 7pm to 9pm at the Civic Centre. Come along and join the fun and games. Fancy dress optional but highly recommended. Only £3.50 per person (adult or child) to include a hot dog and drink. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Entertainment provided by Unique Kids Parties. Contact email: [email protected] phone: 01273 589777.

YOGA: Every Monday from 7.15pm to 8.15pm in the Civic Centre. Contact Jane email: [email protected] phone: 07703 167895.

DANCE CLASS: Children’s Dance Class for pre-school children aged 2 to 4 years every Tuesday from 9am to 9.30am at the Civic Centre. £3.50 per session. Contact Anneli Smith via Civic Centre, 01273 589777.

COUNCIL MEETING: The Planning and Highways Committee meet on Monday at 7.30pm. If there is insufficient business, meetings may be cancelled. Please therefore telephone the Civic Centre on 01273 589777 to ensure that a meeting is being held (an Agenda will be placed on the website). Meetings are open to members of the public who are able to ask questions for a 15 minute period at the start of each meeting. Meetings are held in Telscombe Civic Centre, unless otherwise stated.

FOOTNOTES: I have the BBC’s Radio 4 programme on virtually from dawn to dusk, a sort of sound wallpaper. I prefer the background of people talking. Some like music all day, but I lose patience with the inane comments, both on the popular and classical music channels from the so-called link men that I have tried over the years. However, I have in recent times, been increasingly irritated by the poor speech quality of some of the presenters on Radio 4. I have lost count of the times I have bawled ‘Aitch, not Haitch’, at the radio, ‘Into, not inter’ and the real bugbear, the substitution of ‘ink’ for ‘ing’. Then there is using the word absolutely when they mean simply yes. The list is endless. I started my career at the tender age of 12 with BBC Home Service, and the people whom I worked with then would have been appalled at this dumbing down of the English language. It is not anything snobbish, it is merely a matter of speaking what we used to refer to as received pronunciation. I appreciate local dialects and accents as much as the next person, having spent hours studying them as a student, but when they are introduced into a programme and become so unintelligible that the meaning is lost, it all becomes meaningless and boring. I understand Chaplin better than I understand some accents I listen to these days. His advantage is that he only mews at me when it is time for lunch, otherwise, apart from a loud purring when he is sitting here on the desk beside me, he remains silent. However, the sun is shining, the air is almost spring like in its warmth, which means hopefully the Winter will be short and sweet. Go safely, wherever your journeys take you.