14th-20th May: horses at the cafe, winning a gorilla, hens and negroni
Good afternoon, I hope you are enjoying your Friday and looking forward to the weekend? Welcome to Village Diary, a round up of things seen and done in and around Rusthall in Kent.
It’s been a while since I visited the Victorian cemetery at Woodbury Park off St John’s Road in Tunbridge Wells, but with a little time on our hands on Saturday, this glorious little park was the perfect place to stop for a wander in the sunshine. Amidst the wildflowers, illustrious people buried here include artist Charles Tattershall Dodd, Jane Austen’s brother Henry and Samuel Smirke, designer of the circular reading room in the British Museum.
On Monday we were finishing off the last details of June’s Langton Life before it went to the printers - always a slightly tense moment when you can’t change anything anymore, but I think it’s a good issue. It’s a great team effort from advertising, design, and editorial, but wouldn’t work at all without contributions from the community and the support of local businesses.
I didn’t leave my house on Tuesday because my daughter was ill, but thankfully she was back to herself by Wednesday. I went to visit Christine Ashdown, who has been fundraising for a variety of charities for decades and is well known in the village. She gave me the soft toy gorilla that I had won in her most recent raffle, which raised £1000 for Hospice in the Weald and we had a cup of tea in her garden. She had got her lunch from Charlie’s Angels Kitchen, and said how helpful it was for people not to have to turn their gas on to cook. She couldn’t believe how much the cost of living is going up at the moment and worried about how families would cope. She was also remembering her own happy childhood in Tunbridge Wells. “We had more freedom than children nowadays, we were lucky. We’d take a bottle of drink and some sandwiches and we would be out for the whole day.”
This week I registered for The Big Plastic Count , which is set to be the biggest survey to date of the amount of single use plastic used in the UK. More than 190,000 people this week will be keeping count of every little bit of plastic that goes in their rubbish or recycling. The results will be used to give evidence to the government to ask them to take action to reduce the amount of single use plastic used in the UK by 50% by 2025. In Rusthall there isn’t anywhere for soft plastics to be recycled so the Environment Committee I am part of plan to ask One Stop stores if they can include soft plastic recycling points in their shops soon. Recycling is good, but best of all is reducing what we use. Taking part in the survey is opening my eyes to how much single use plastic there is in my life!
It was lovely to spot two horses and their owners out for a drink at the A-Star Cafe - pictured here with cafe worker George. It’s been a week of glorious sunshine alternating with rainy downpours, enlivened by a mid-week lightning storm. Thankfully the sun was out for the horses, and for the volunteers at the Hospice in the Weald charity shop on the High Street, who were offering cups of tea alongside a recruitment drive. If you fancy volunteering, contact them here.
After school on Thursday I was back at the A-Star for an apres-school milkshake (the cup another item for my plastic count), followed by an impromptu playdate with her friend. When we returned the friend to their house, hens and a negroni tempted us to linger longer chatting and playing in the evening sunshine.
This morning I was at school to help with preperation for the School Fair tomorrow. While I was there Greg Clark MP arrived to take the children’s assembly so I asked if I could take some photographs for the magazine. I was told that Year 4 had some searching questions to put to Greg, but sadly I had to get back to fair prep. What were the questions, and how good were the answers? Hopefully I will find out later!
Finally, there has been time to visit the Rusthall Community Larder - this week I was happy to get some chicken, cucumber, avocado, mango, tomato soup, pasata, bread and cakes. It’s a great way to save money and food that would otherwise be wasted from landfill, and takes place every Friday at Rusthall Church Centre from 12.30.
Tomorrow we are hoping for a return to warmer weather for the fair. It is taking place from 11.30 am -2.30 pm in the school grounds on Rusthall High Street. There will be some fantastic raffle prizes, a BBQ, Charlie’s Angels Kitchen, Pimm’s, forest school activies, a book stall, plant stall, storytelling and poetry workshops, and bouncy castle, as well as all the usual games. Do go along and support your local school if you can - they are an important part of our community and would love to see you.
Thank you for reading, I really do appreciate it, and hope that whatever you do, you have a lovely weekend!
Jayne
