Thursday 31 October 2013

The King's World

Yes, you read that right, the King's World is the parish magazine distributed to subscribing households in Kingsley, Oakhanger and the Worldhams throughout the year containing all the news that's fit to print, all the juicy gossip, a comprehensive who's who and even advice on what to grow in your garden.

If you're not already subscribing, now is the time to start. The Christmas/New Year double edition will be going to press shortly, the annual sub is a mere £10, delivered to your door - how good is that!

Give Mario a call right now!

Remaining unregulated

Now that the busies in Westminster have granted themselves a Royal Charter to interfere with impose minimal standards of common decency on the free press including this blog, be it known that the King's Blog will NOT SUBSCRIBE to the relevant regulating body.

This means that anyone suing the blog for, say, libel, will be entitled to have their costs paid by the blog, WIN OR LOSE.

Good luck with that.


Wednesday 30 October 2013

Power cut resilience

During Monday's power cut I noticed two cases of failed resilience.

The first was that the burner of my camping gas stove had become clogged with dust having sat undisturbed on the bottom shelf since the last all-day, all-night power cut several years ago. Keep your burners dust-free!

The second I only noticed when I got in my car to go somewhere with power, turned on the radio and heard that the Prime Minister had advised "checking online" before venturing out. This made me realise that we need a local online resource in such times, not something I'd previously considered. So bookmark this blog because during future power cuts I intend to keep the blog updated with details of the local situation. Before venturing out during a power cut please check the blog for details of road closures, flooding and traffic problems.

Thursday 24 October 2013

Dangerous Motorcycles at 60

I recently achieved the ripe old age of 60 and to mark the event I went for a motorcycle ride. Not my longest ride todate but over 1,200 miles between 7:30am and 10:30am the next day, on one of those "dangerous motorbikes", mostly in the rain. I reckon that, at the age of 60, I no longer need be frightened of the health and safety do-gooders and in any event it's not like I just did a spur of the moment act of lunacy.

In order to complete the ride and return home in one piece a number of conditions were met:

  1. Train to Motorcycle Advanced Observer standard
  2. Understand that accidents don't just happen and there aren't "too many idiots" out there
  3. Take full responsibility for my own safety and not rely on other road users to not kill me
  4. Understand requirements and management of food and fluid intake
  5. Understand requirements and management of sleep, fatigue and concentration
  6. Farkle motorbike to be fit for and comfortable for at least 24 hour continuous operation
  7. Regularly practise night riding, motorway riding, traffic filtering 
  8. Start with my "sleep account" in credit
  9. Avoid all stimulants including caffeine
  10. Wear proper gear
  11. Be mentally prepared
  12. Complete two previous certified Iron Butt rides as well as numerous others
 What would be the point of being 60 if I was too scared to ride a motorcycle?

Tuesday 22 October 2013

Kingsley Parish Council - Thursday 24th

Kingsley Parish Council will meet on Thursday, 24th October 2013 in the Kingsley Centre at 7.30pm.

AGENDA

1. Chairman’s Opening Remarks
2. Apologies for Absence
3. Declarations of Personal/Prejudicial Interest
4. Public Question Time: Public Questions
Consideration of agenda items which will be open to public participation

5. Approval of Minutes of the Meeting held on 26th September 2013
6. Matters Arising
7. Planning
Applications ongoing:
21066/026 Bakers Farm Nursery, Main Road, Kingsley, Bordon, GU35 9NJ
Removal of occupancy condition imposed under S52 agreement to 21066/001
   
22495/008 Burninghams, South Hay Lane, Kingsley, Bordon, GU35 9NW
Two storey extension to the rear

54941 Land South of Main Road, Kingsley, Bordon
Change of use of land for stationing of a mobile home for residential purposes for a single gypsy pitch with creation of new access off main road, track and associated hard standing, treatment plant and amenity block (FUL)

Enforcement Appeal EC/51617/002 Land West of, Sickles Lane, Kingsley, Alton

Enforcement Appeal EC/37724/011 Land at Dean Farm, Main Road, Kingsley, Bordon

55095/001 4 Bakers Barn, Oakhanger Road, Kingsley, Bordon, GU35 9NJ
Listed building consent for external alterations to clad an outbuilding to form shed, moving
of a fence and internal alterations to outbuilding to form four car ports.

37484/003 Westerkirk, Main Road, Kingsley, Bordon, GU35 9ND
Resubmission of previous application, scheme to incorporate non material amendments.
First floor extension to rear, single storey extension to side, conversion of garage and workshop to living accommodation, detached garage to front.

52258/002 The Old Piggery, Main Road, Kingsley, Bordon
Two detached dwellings with covered parking, new access, landscaping and associated works

New application:
20136/045 LMC Sleaford Garage, Fanham Road, Bordon, GU35 0QP
Two storey extension to rear/side following removal of detached storage buildings and containers

8. St Nicholas Cemetery & Cemetery Chapel
To receive an update from Cllr Pearson

9. Transport, Highways and Road Safety
To receive an update from Cllr Lazenby

10. Commons, Village Greens and Rights of Way
Upper green: play equipment
To discussed quotation received from Playsafe

Lower Green:
To discussed quotation received from Paul Grace

Rights of Way: To receive an update from Cllr Lazenby

11. Community Resilience
12. Environment and Biodiversity
13. Sports, Recreation and Leisure
14. Kingsley Village Forum   
15. Parish Plan 
To receive an update from Cllr Rigden  

16.  Housing, Business & Commerce
17. Communications
Website:
To receive an update from Cllr T. Scrivener

18. District Councillor
19. Procedures, Finance and Payments
Payments to be made & Accounts to accept

    Date of Next Meeting of Kingsley Parish Council -
       Thursday 28th November 2013 - 7.30 pm at the Kingsley Centre 
      

Friday 18 October 2013

Mrs Coats

Mrs. Coats was for many years the cook at the village school, a short rotund, jolly looking lady she was, I suppose, just how a cook should look. She must have been getting on in years because I remember her throughout the time I knew her with grey hair going on white. Apart from her cooking, Mrs. Coats was a neighbour of ours as she lived in the house directly opposite ours, number 18. Her husband, Mick Coats, worked somewhere on Bordon camp but I don't recall what he actually did.
 
Most children appear to look back upon school meals with a degree of horror and disgust and school food has often been the stuff of comic books and has  generally not been held in high esteem. However, certainly as far as I am concerned, I don't believe this could be said of the food we were served up in Kingsley school. The meals were well prepared, wholesome and tasty. Throughout my early school days, in the fifties, rationing was still in place and this must have had an impact upon the food available to the school cooks. Notwithstanding this I seem to recall a good variety of dishes. There was not a choice, you got the meal of the day and that was that, one main and a sweet. There were various dishes which would be produced on a regular basis, stews, pies and bakes etc. Custard with a variety of additions, sago pudding and tapioca were all known to us. Milk puddings, sponge puddings and steamed puddings all featured upon the dessert list.
 
My personal favourite was a pudding, called by Mrs. Coats, chocolate crunch. This was a biscuity kind of sweet which was produced in large flat baking trays and cut into square portions for serving. It was firm and had a bit of a bite to it without being hard. I know it had cocoa in it which was where it got the chocolate flavour from. It was usually served with custard but sometimes with a sweet white sauce the name of which I don't recall. I suppose to some extent it resembled short bread but without the buttery taste and it was firmer than shortbread is. I just loved it, so much so that I asked Mrs. Coats for the recipe which she kindly gave me. Mother made this delight for us over the years but sadly the recipe was lost and all of my attempts to recreate the product have not succeeded. I have gone to great lengths to find that recipe, having been an avid collector of cookery books for many years and searched the internet for old school recipes in the hope of finding it, nothing has been successful. One would think it an easy task to recreate such a product but nothing quite comes up to my recollection of the original. It could, of course, simply be a trick of the memory and I could be chasing the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but I don't think so. If by some strange quirk of fate a Kingsley resident reads the above and has that recipe I would be delighted to receive a copy of it. I have no idea if the illusive recipe was one of Mrs. Coats own or one which had been passed on to her.
 
As I got older I developed quite an interest in gardening, or more specifically, growing vegetables and to this end my father gave me a piece of his allotment. This was a plot of land which was situated between the gardens of numbers seven and eight Woodfield and the sewage plant. There were, I think, two plots, father had one of them and Bill Woods who lived in number twelve had the other. By agreement with Mr. Clark, who lived next door to us in  number seven, a gap was made in our fence and the boundary fence across the bottom of his garden which allowed me to go between our garden and the allotment. Thus I began growing my vegetables and although I was not madly keen on eating them  I loved the thrill of planting seeds and waiting for the plants to germinate. I planted so many seed that the space needed to accommodate them increased to the point where I covered the plot. My surplus vegetables were passed on to some of the neighbours and as a result of this Mrs. Coats received a few of my lettuces. Clearly they made an impression upon her as one evening she came across to the house and asked how many plants I was growing. Quite a lot was the answer as I didn't like throwing anything away and I crammed plants in all over the place.
 
It would appear that amongst Mrs. Coats duties, as school cook, was the purchase of the produce needed to provide the meals. She offered to buy her lettuce, and any other crops I could provide, from me and thus began a very nice little business for me. The lettuce was ordered the day before it was required and delivered on the following morning before I went to school. This was, of course, after I had moved from Kingsley School to Alton. It was an arrangement that worked well and was to our mutual benefit, I got a boost to my pocket money and Mrs. Coats and the school got very fresh produce. Sourcing locally was, you see, up and running and indeed the norm in those days. One could be forgiven for thinking the modern trend of sourcing fresh local produce, much publicised by farm shops etc. was a new initiative but no, we in Kingsley were doing it years ago, well before big business killed it off! As they say what goes around comes around … it surely does.
 
I remember Mrs. Coats retiring and sometime later passing away, her husband also passed away but I don't recall who went first but I seem to recollect that neither outlived the other by very long.

Friday 4 October 2013

Crimestoppers - October

Crimestoppers urges the public to nail metal thieves
Theft of metal is a huge risk to the UK and whilst prices remain high and global demand for metal continues to rise, this crime is big business and an international problem that will not disappear on its own.  Costs to the UK economy are estimated at £770m each year.

Metal theft is the hot topic today. We read about incidents in the papers and many of us may well have felt the impact of metal theft on our day to day lives; train cancellations from cable and track theft, loss of phone and internet connection, school closures.  However, awareness of metal theft is only part of the battle.  In order to stop criminals continuing to disrupt our lives we all need to be proactive, vigilant and to report our suspicions quickly. 

Police Forces in the South East recently introduced a scheme named Operation Tornado., working together to target metal theft.

There is also new legislation which came into effect on 1st October 2013 to make it harder for thieves and unscrupulous scrap dealers to do their business unlawfully. A licence will be required by operators wishing to sell scrap metal, no cash payments are permitted and any scrap should be fully traceable. It will also make it easier to trace any person who sells metal to Scrap Metal Merchants and will help to remove and prosecute dealers of stolen metal. 

As a Force we are committed to reducing metal theft in Hampshire and Isle of Wight. Operation Tornado aims to target unscrupulous dealers rather than inhibit legitimate businesses.  However we still need intelligence from the public to tackle this crime from all angles. For example, if you have a skip on your drive which is suddenly attracting people who start rummaging and taking any metal items, please tell us. People on the roof of the local school who clearly aren’t there to repair it? Tell us.

To pass on information about metal theft or any crime anonymously, Crimestoppers can be contacted online at www.crimestoppers-uk.org, or by calling the 24/7 anonymous 0800 555 111 number.  Whichever form of communication you chose, no one will know you gave information – unless you tell them yourself!

Who’s stealing metal from homes, schools and churches? Cable from railways? Who’s a crooked metal dealer? Tell us 0800 555111.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

LMC Sleaford Garage, Farnham Road

This application, 20136/045, seeking permission for

TWO STOREY EXTENSION TO REAR/SIDE FOLLOWING REMOVAL OF DETACHED STORAGE BUILDINGS AND CONTAINERS

is marked as open for consultation until 30th October.