Spring and Billy return

Yes, spring is here at last and so was Billy Mitchell last week. It was nice to get back into the old routine with live music again in the Village hall.

It doesn’t seem five minutes since Billy was here but I was amazed when he said it was two years. But thinking back he was one of the first if not the first after the Happy Cats to appear in the hall.

As well as being a very good musician he has a wonderful sense of humour which obviously stems from the mining community in North Shields where he lives. He has some brilliant one liners and one I remember from last time ” North Shields is like Roumania without the gymnastic ability” and ” North Shields is a place where the prices go up and the shops come down”

And of course there is ”Woking the dog” a song about the Chinese eating habits.

All in all a very good and entertaining evening for the start of the new live music season in Moorsholm.

Oh and did I mention he had some CD’s. He did mention it a couple of times. Haven’t heard it yet but Valerie really liked it.

The Post Office

It came as no surprise that the Moorsholm Post Office has been threatened with closure.

Steve Kay has sent round a flyer and has made the following relevant comment:

REMEMBER – If we do nothing it is certain that Moorsholm Post Office will close, BUT if we protest strongly enough, we have a chance to save it.

He is asking every household in Moorsholm and the surrounding area to write or email, in protest, to the Post office Network Development Manager. The details are as follows.

Adrian Wales
Network Development Manager
Post Office Ltd
c/0 National Consultation Team
FREEPOST CONSULTATION TEAM
Email: consultation@postoffice.co.uk

Useful points to make:

* distance by road to the nearest alternative ( about 4 miles )
* the poor bus service
* people without cars
* the need for senior citizens to use the post office
* the decline over the years of the village ameneties
* the role of the post office as a centre of village life

There is also a petition to sign in the Post Office

Moorsholm Eco Project

The Eco Project finished in December 2007 and a Project Report has been issued from Melanie Greenwood who has organised and managed a very successful project which culminated in two awards. A special ecology award in The Calor Village Of The Year Competion 2007 and an award from the Energy And Environment Industries.

The report was well presented and well written and gave a detailed summary of all the projects, workshops and literature that was distributed in the village. It should prove to be a very useful reference for anyone considering a similar project.

Congratulations to Melanie and to everybody who was involved in the project over the last 12 months and contributed to its success.

Ecology is obviously an ongoing lifetime project and in 12 months only the basics can be covered. Because of the interest shown by the village it was decided to create an Ecology information site which looks at news and projects in the UK and also links to the hundreds of Eco videos that are available mainly from the US but also from the UK and other English speaking countries.

This website will be launched in the Spring.

New Housing For Moorsholm?

This certainly ended the peace and quiet over Christmas when somebody found out that two areas in the village had been designated as housing sites. It certainly caused an angry response especially as nobody knew anything about it. The planning office said that such information would be posted in the community centre, there isn’t one, or in the library, there isn’t one. The obvious place would be in the Post Office or on the noticeboard by the bus stop. BUT there was nothing.There had been no public notification of any kind

I don’t believe that errors like this just happen when something as important as planning applications are involved. Don’t tell anybody and let it go through on the quiet sounds like stealth planning to me.

One things for sure, nobody in the village has the slightest interest in building more houses, except for the few landowners with suitable land to sell and presumably then planning  to leave the village. Personally I don’t think anything is going to happen in their lifetimes. There must be hundreds of acres of brown field sites in and around Redcar and Cleveland that should be used first.

As a footnote there was a vigorous response with letters of objection to the planning office and Steve Kay has said in his latest newsletter that the proposals do not constitute applications for planning permission. So in theory a long way to go before anything happens. We shall see!!

Time to look back

Its New Years Eve and the “in between time” on Monday afternoon, so time for some reflections on the last year.

Without doubt the biggest success was for Moorsholm Live, which has just completed the first season of providing live entertainment in the Village. We were able to attend every performance so I think we have a really good appreciation of what was presented.

The most noticeable thing was the variety of the acts. Although mostly musical, the styles covered a wide range of tastes and my own particular favourites were the Happy Cats and the Caffreys but we certainly appreciated them all including the live theatre.

Thanks are due to Judith, Trevor, Liz, Norman, Helen and Richard in particular and the members of the Forum for supporting them. Another full program is planned for next year and I’m sure it will be just as good.

Was it successful? Well when it started there were some spare seats in the Village Hall, when it finished it was sold out. That says it all and congratulations to everybody involved.

Another big occasion was the meeting to discuss what to do with the Village Hall. Unfortunately the decision to rebuild it on the same site will probably have sealed its fate.

In the Summer we toured Northumberland and Cumbria from coast to coast and you could see lots of village halls in the smaller villages falling into disrepair. The reason is that nobody wants them apart from those with grey or no hair. They belong to the last century when they were virtually the only form of community activity. Many were built in the 1950′s and unfortunately had a fatal flaw. They were built with the “new roofing tiles” which were fashionable but made of asbestos. With the knowledge at the time it was a good decision but of course things are different now. There is a major cost to remove the asbestos and rebuild the roof and building. You are probably talking in excess of £200K.

What surprised me at the meeting was that at no time was the cost mentioned. Who would propose to rebuild the Village Hall without even discussing the cost and how that amount of money was going to be raised by a small community with no experience of fund raising.Very strange.

In reality the Village Hall roof will probably last another 10 or 15 years and by then the next generation will be running things and probably decide to knock it down and build a community centre on the recreation field, which was the only workable decision in the first place.

Its all academic really because no organisation is going to fund a rebuild which has no provision for sports and children and is hardly used. Compare this to all the local success stories which are sports and children orientated. Think Hinderwell and Lythe.

Another very successful village is Allendale in Northumberland, which won the Calor Village of the year award and they have 52 groups using the village hall on a monthly basis.I think we have 4 but we only have a population of about 400.

The population of Allendale is over 3000, so clearly the village halls that have that level of support can only be from the larger villages. The smaller village halls will just disappear.

A very successful season

Friday 30th November was the last performance for the 2007 season at Moorsholm Live. It featured the New Rope String Band.

As they all walked in with fiddles, guitars and accordion all appeared to be normal except for the appearance of a kilt. In our performance the accordion player was the one wearing the kilt.

At first the pace was a little slow but it certainly speeded up as it went along. Although starting off in a string band vein, it rapidly diversified into all sorts of weird and wonderful performances. In reality it is not a band as such but a very varied and clever musical theatre.

There were two particular “turns” that were really impressive. One was a “scottish pipes” interlude, which was a percussion performance with pieces of plastic pipe being whacked on the various parts of the band’s bodies to play a tune. The base pipes attached to step ladders were played by hitting with a flip flop. Fireworks in the base pipes were set off at the end of the performance.

There was then a lesson on musical notes and chords where the band poked their heads through holes in a large sheet which had musical notes and bars painted on it. By running behind the sheet and sticking their heads through the various holes they demonstrated harmonies and pitch. Are you still with me?

You can only be amazed at how much time and practice you would have to put in to get all this just right. The only thing you can say is that their musical theatre was like no other and everybody thoroughly enjoyed it.

As this is the last performance in 2007 for Moorsholm Live we should all congratulate the team on how well they have done in organising and presenting such a rich mix of music and theatre. It’s no wonder that the monthly events are now fully booked.

Next year promises to be even better with an appearance in the Summer of the “Bard Of Barnsley” Ian Macmillan. He is well known by the teaching profession for leaving them all in tears of laughter when he has appeared at their conferences. This performance definitely will be SOLD OUT.

Les tracks us down

After finding our lost dogs owner last week, we were wondering how Rocco was getting on. Unfortunately after we had delivered Rocco back to his owner we didn’t find out his name.

However a couple of days later there was a knock at the door and there in the dark was a gentleman with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of whisky. He turned out to be Les Smith who we subsequently found out was a cousin of Don and Pete.

You should always be wary of Yorkshireman bearing gifts but this was a very nice gesture which we both really appreciated. How did he know we both like whisky?

Thanks to Les and I’m sure we will visit him in the not to distant future to see how Rocco is getting on.