LEADING members of Thame’s Inner Wheel and Rotary Clubs recently rrepresented Thame at the ‘Sinaia Forever’ Festival in Romania. The event was organised by Thame’s twin town, Sinaia, in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania over the weekend of September 4 to 6. The delegates were recommended by Thame-Sinaia Friendship Association, since none of the Thame Town Councillors were available to travel during that weekend.
Thame delegation with Vlad Oprea, Mayor of Sinaia
June Bateman and Lynn Singer, from Thame’s Inner Wheel Club, together with Erroll Bateman and John Singer from Thame Rotary Club, had the chance to meet delegates from other European towns twinned with Sinaia which include Athis Mons of France, Kusadasi of Turkey and Dimona of Israel. They also visited the world renowned Peles Castle, built by King Carol 1st of Romania in the 19th Century, the beautiful 17th Century Sinaia Monastery, as well as George Enescu’s Memorial House with interesting information about the famous 20th Century composer and musician.
Erroll Bateman said: “We were delighted we were able to represent Thame on a three-day twinning visit to Sinaia in our first ever trip to Romania. Thame’s twin town is a surprisingly beautiful mountain resort. Our Romanian hosts were most hospitable and generous.”
Erroll added: “We had an enjoyable and informative meeting with Vlad Oprea, the charismatic Mayor of Sinaia. He and his town council team are very keen to develop further the friendship and exchanges among the people of our twinned towns.”
The series of visits to Sinaia have continued this week, since Graham Baker, traditional blacksmith of Gommes Forge is representing Thame at Sinaia’s “Unity through diversity beyond borders” international crafts workshop among other traditional craftsmen from Romania, Macedonia and Turkey.
Thame-Sinaia Friendship Association will organise a public talk where the recent visitors to Thame’s twinned town will share their travel experiences and twinning opportunities at Thame Town Hall’s Upper Chamber on Monday, November 23, at 8 pm.
Thame and Sinaia have been officially twinned since 2012 when the two town councils approved the Twinning Charter which can now be viewed inside Thame Town Council’s Information Centre.
To suggest people exchange projects or to find out the latest about Thame-Sinaia Friendships Association, please visit www.facebook.com/thamesinaia
THAME Food Festival is preparing to serve up a double helping of deliciousness as it unveils not one but two fantastic line-ups for the demo and interview stages this year.
Frances Quinn
Saturday, September 26, will see an amazing array of cheffing talent taking to the AGA Demonstration stage in the Upper High Street, hosted by Simon Brown, AGA Demonstrator and cookery presenter on QVC, the home shopping channel.
Getting things off to an inspiring start at 10am with a cookery demo especially for children to sit at with BBC One’s MasterChef winner 2013 Natalie Coleman, who will be encouraging budding young foodies to experiment with different foods and tastes and giving them brilliant ideas to try at home.
Breton baker Richard Bertinet, owner of The Bertinet Cookery School in Bath, takes over at 11am to share his passion for bread making and creating faultless bakes time after time. Things take on a distinctly Italian feel at 11.45am as husband and wife team Giancarlo and Katie Caldesi cook authentic Italian dishes inspired by their travels, cookery schools and restaurants Caldesi in Campagna, Café Caldesi and La Cucina Caldesi Cookery School. Join them for plenty of buono gusto.
The irrepressible David Mooney is back at 12.30 with his take on gorgeous gastro pub food fresh from his growing pub empire the New Moon Pub Company, before handing over to home-grown talent Lucie Greenwood at 1.15pm. Lucie cooks delectable treats at The Milk Shed in Weston-on-the-Green and will delight with some of her favourites.
The heat is really turned up in the afternoon with the start of the festival’s annual live cook-off between The Raymond Blanc Cookery School and Aylesbury College. Will the students pull off a coup this year improving their 2-1 score, or will Monsieur Blanc’s team win the day? Take your places at 2pm to find out.
Hot on the heels of this trilling challenge comes Thame Food Festival Ambassador himself Raymond Blanc, who will bowl everyone over with his love of cooking with the best, seasonal produce as he creates a truly wonderful dish at 2.45pm.
If you’ve been gripped by baking and the tension in the bake-off tent, don’t miss some of the faces you’ve seen battling it out on TV in an extra large helping of baking brilliance starting with Great British Bake Off Winner 2013 Frances Quinn and her extraordinarily imaginative bakes at 3.45.
A fabulous double act ensures the day ends on a high as two more talented bakers step into the limelight at 4.30. Luis Troyano (Great British Bake-Off finalist 2014) and Miranda Gore-Browne (2010) will show you techniques to take a bake from every day to show stopping and share their love of great home baking.
Book-ending the action across town in the High Street meanwhile will be the interview stage sponsored by Barr Kitchens where festival patron Lotte Duncan will be putting the big names through their paces. Natalie Coleman is the first to share her experiences about what it’s like to win MasterChef, how it’s changed her life and what she’s done since, at 11am.
Richard Bertinet will be back at 11.45 to talk a bit more about baking and why he loves nothing more than sharing his passion with others, and then at 12 noon it will be time for the big reveal of our own home-grown baking talent. Join Frances Quinn and the other Great British Bake-Off celebs to see who rose to the challenge to be Thame’s best baker in the Big Thame Bake.
At 12.45, Sophie Grigson will return from a shopping spree at the festival with a basket laden with goodies she’s found. Lotte and Sophie will tasting and giving their verdict on the pick of the stalls.
At 2pm it’s time for The Big Thame Bake – Fully Risen, a whole batch of celebrity bakers on the stage in one go. Don’t miss Frances Quinn, Luis Troyano, Miranda Gore-Browne and Howard Middleton. This is your chance to quiz them on what it’s like to be on the show, working with Paul and Mary and as well as all things baking.
Finally, you can listen to the incredible tales of culinary adventures and a life creating one of world’s ultimate gourmet boltholes, Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, as Raymond Blanc joins Lotte to talk about just some of his many passions.
If you want to have a hand in making all of these good things happen, the organisers would love to hear from you. The festival is looking for volunteers to get involved on the day, with tasks such as helping to clear pots and pans from the demo stage, the odd bit of washing up, some general fetching and carrying and other important, behind the scenes jobs on the day. It’s fun and means you get to see another side of the festival, as well as helping to make the day run as smoothly as possible.
So if you’d like to find out more on how you can do your bit to make it a memorable day, please contact Alison Isherwood at alison@thamefoodfestival.co.uk. The Thame Food Festival takes place from 9am to 5pm on Saturday 26th September 2015 in the heart of Thame town centre. For more information, to book any of the special festival events and to sign up for the Big Thame Bake, please go to www.thamefoodfestival.co.uk.
ON a day that saw Oxfordshire County Council agree to launch a public consultation on its plans to close 44 Children’s Centres, Thame Town Cllr Mary Stiles has spoken about her fears that the service for young people and their families remaining would just end up ‘fire fighting’ and costing a lot more in the longer term.
Cllr Mary Stiles
Cllr Mary Stiles joined the Save Oxon’s Children Centres protest group last Tuesday outside County Hall and has said that she would have been there today for the county council’s Cabinet meeting if she had not been going away on holiday.
Emphasizing that she was speaking in a personal capacity, and not on behalf of Thame Town Council nor in her capacity as the Chair of Thame Red Kite Children’s Centre’s Advisory Group (That group will meet in October and will issue a formal response then), Mrs Stiles told Thame.Net:
Image courtesy of oxfordshire.gov.uk
“I believe that Children’s Centres provide a vital service for babies, young children and their families. To cut them is very short-sighted, because prevention is always better than cure. Everyone knows that the government is not funding local government adequately and that savings have to be made, but all of the proposals would mean the end of the fantastic service provided at present.”
During the debate this afternoon, County Cllr Gill Sanders told the meeting of OCC’s Cabinet that Oxfordshire was facing its ‘Dr Beeching moment,’ before it agreed to consult on the proposal to replace 44 of the county’s Children’s Centres and seven of its early intervention hubs, with eight ‘family support centres’.
Mary Stiles went on to say that to join with Children’s Services to have provision for 0 – 19 year-olds did make sense and would definitely save money. “But for those services to be available only to referred families, would stigmatise those families thus making them hard to reach and would be “fire-fighting”, with no prevention work, thus storing up problems for later – and resulting in a much greater expense to the public purse in the end.
“It is also such a waste of public money to have invested in centres, for them then not to be used for their intended purpose. Rather than closing centres such as we have locally, OCC should be working with local councils and other groups to be creative and find a way to keep up the good work carried out by Children Centre staff – even if for the foreseeable future there is less provision.
“Less is better than none. If you cut something completely, rarely do you get it back. If you keep it going, there will be something to build on in better times.”
The public consultation on Oxfordshire’s proposals, aimed at saving £8 million pounds, will be launched in October.
Opposition to the proposals is running high and an online 38 Degrees petition started by a young, Oxfordshire mother in the past couple of days, already had 3,306 signatures at the time of this posting.
Dusk falls as Thame fair is being set up in the Upper High Street
THE Thame September Fair will be taking place in the centre of the town between Thursday 17 and Saturday 19 September 2015.
During the Fair, a Temporary Road Closure and Traffic Regulation Order will be in force, which will restrict the entry of vehicles to the centre of Thame from 4pm on Wednesday, September 16, until 12 noon on Sunday, September 20, 2015.
Traffic movement will be restricted and barriers will be in position at the following locations:
High Street at the junction with Bell Lane
North Street at the junction with Wellington Street
Upper High Street at the junction with East Street
Rooks Lane at the Upper High Street junction
Nelson Street at the Upper High Street junction
Vehicles will not be allowed to park in the road or on the pavements of these affected roads. Anyone parking will run the risk of causing an offence by obstruction and cars will be removed.
Access permits are available for residents whose property is located within the road closure and have off-street parking. To apply for a permit, contact Thame Town Council on 01844 212833.
Full details of the Road Closure Order can be viewed at the Information Centre in Thame Town Hall.
THAME continued to reach out to its earthquake-stricken namesakem the village of Thame, in Namche, in the Solukhumbu District of Nepal, with a Mega Quiz on Saturday, raising over £1,750 towards helping the rebuilding of Thame (pronounced Tam-ay) particularly focusing on the school.
Filling the Thame Leisure Centre, 19 teams of eight, that’s 152 people, answered questions posed by three of Thame’s most popular Quizmasters, Sue Boyle, Peter Lambert and Brian West, on subjects as diverse as Geography, Sports News and Current Affairs, Music with a ‘mountain’ connection in the title, and a Heads and Tails ‘true’ or ‘false’ round of facts about Nepal. Who knew that Nepal is the world capital for growing mustard?
The winning team was The Brass Monkeys. Their prize was a bottle of wine each, donated by Waitrose of Thame, who also provided a bottle of Champagne for the winner of the Nepal themed ‘heads’ and ‘tails’, true or false round. Other prizes were equally generously donated by Biagio, Kismet, Brothers, The Cutting Rooms, Bizzie Lizzie, Jeannette Matelot Green, Dani Dennington, Raquets Fitness Centre, Thame Players, Thame Arts and Literature Festival, Snowline, Two Wheels, Greens Furnishings, Top Sport, The Thatch, The Rising Sun, Fore Golf, XT Brewery, the Thame Leisure Centre and The Cross Keys.
At the end of the evening, the Thame giant ‘sherpa’ scarf, all 108 metres of it (as featured at Thame Carnival in June – Guess the length of the giant scarf, and at Towersey Festival recently – Guess the weight of the giant scarf), was unravelled, picked up and held in a long line by all of the quizzers in a symbolic gesture of unity with our Thame, Nepal friends, shouting out their good wishes to the people of Thame in Nepal in their own language, with a rousing “Tashi dalek!”
The resulting short video will be published as a message to the villagers of Thame, in Nepal, carrying with it the warmth, love and good wishes that resounded around the hall on Saturday night, from one more fortunate Thame to the other less so – a community that will need help and support to rebuild itself for many months to come.
You can support, follow news and updates from, the Community group, ‘Thame to Thame’ on its facebook page: LINK HERE
A NEW Social Sewing Group has been set up at The Barns centre in Thame, running every Thursday, 10am till 1pm.
Sew Patchwork is a hand sewing patchwork group for all abilities Beginners welcome! For further information call either Theresa on 07919918545, or Sue on 01844 212742.
THE Thames Valley region of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) has consulted with its members over the Government’s promised review of business rates. By doing so it has been able to establish what business owners would like to see included in the FSBs formal submission to the government in the autumn.
David Knowles Leak
David Hawes, Thames Valley Regional Chairman, Federation of Small Businesses, said: “The case for reform of Non Domestic Rates (NDR), or business rates as they are commonly known, is well rehearsed and broadly accepted; suffice to say that the current system is expensive, complicated, opaque, regressive and slow to respond to changes in economic conditions. It has a disproportionate impact on certain sectors, and discourages investment.
“Business rates are the highest costs most small businesses face after rent and staff wages, and they place an excessive burden on small businesses. The Government is rightly supporting businesses with small business rates relief and transitional rates relief. This support must continue until a new system is in place.
“The case for overhauling business rates is overwhelming and it’s good to see the Government recognise this. Small businesses would like to see the ambitious review deliver tangible reform, not just empty words. The FSB also welcomes the opportunity for local authorities to benefit from the growth and success of local businesses by retaining additional business rates revenue raised locally. This should encourage local authorities to take steps to support their local businesses to grow and prosper.”
Martin McTague, FSB Local Government Policy Chairman, added: “Our aim is to get more small businesses exempt from paying Business Rates and to make the system fairer for those small businesses still left within it.”
The FSB has stated that it has been instrumental in getting this issue onto the national policy agenda, and that in England, FSB pressure has resulted in the creation of the Small Business Rate Relief (SBRR) scheme, a temporary doubling of the rate of relief, and several extensions to the duration of double relief. “FSBs pressure for reform of the system has convinced the government to launch two reviews of the system,” it claims. These are, an administrative review of how the current system operates to deliver reforms to the current system in time for the 2017 revaluation, and a more wide ranging structural review looking into fundamental reform.
“The outcomes of the review will be fiscally neutral and aligned with the government’s wider fiscal plans,” said David Hawes. The review will report its findings by the time of the Budget in 2016.
THAMES Valley Police is appealing for witnesses to a fatal collision in Haddenham yesterday (10/11), involving a woman in a wheelchair and a camper van.
The collision happened in Stanbridge Road at 1.50pm and involved a red VW camper van which collided with two pedestrians, a 52-year-old woman who was pushing a 69-year-old woman in a wheelchair.
The 69-year-old woman was taken to Stoke Mandeville Hospital where she died later that day .
The 52-year-old woman sustained broken bones and was taken to Stoke Mandeville Hospital where she is currently being treated.
PC Alan Turnbull, from the Serious Collision Investigation Unit in Bicester, said: “I would like to hear from anyone who witnessed the collision, or saw the camper van before it happened.
“Anyone with information should call 24-hour Thames Valley Police enquiry centre on 101 quoting URN 701 10/09.
“If you do not want to speak directly to the police you can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers (opens new window) anonymously on 0800 555 111. No personal details are taken, information is not traced or recorded and you will not go to court.
THAME’S Masonic Hall, the headquarters of the Hampden Lodge, 14, at High Street, is opening its doors to the people of Thame, offering a rare and unique opportunity to go and have a look around the hall and to find out a bit more about Freemasonry.
The Masonic Hall, Thame
Members of the Hampden Lodge will be present on September 26, to answer any questions visitors may have, as well as showing them around the Lodge’s temple.
Mason, Mark Butler, explained: “Maybe you are interested in joining the Freemasons and would like to chat to an existing member first? Or maybe you have a family member who was a Freemason and you would like to see a bit more of what it’s all about? Or maybe you would just like to take this opportunity to look inside one of Thame’s interesting buildings?
“Either way, you will be made to feel very welcome. So save the date and come along and say ‘hello’ on the September 26, between 10am and 3pm.”
Find out more about Freemasonry by visiting the website: http://www.oxfordshirefreemasons.org.uk/
A mixed week for Thame Bowls Club started in cool conditions on Tuesday afternoon when Thame Ladies once again proved too strong for their visitors. This time it was the Ladies of Long Crendon who met the in-form Thame team. Winning on all three rinks and scoring 62 shots to 35, the Ladies are proving difficult to beat. Top Rink was that of Viv Jones, Captain Maire Duncan and Hazel Westcott who won by 20 clear shots.
Ex TV weatherman, Bill Giles
On Tuesday evening Thame Men travelled to near neighbours, Princes Risborough, for their annual six Triples match and conditions were even cooler and wetter. However, it was the Thame Men who handled the difficult conditions well and completely outplayed their opposition. The overall score was 119 shots to 66 shots in Thame’s favour. Top Rink was that of Junior Player Thomas Tisbury, Leonard Grimshaw and skip Bill Giles who won by a massive 22 shots. Other winning skips for Thame were George Andrews, Graham Penn and Paul Heafey.
Thursday saw visitors City and County, Oxford beat Thame’s mid-week team by 28 shots after a mix-up over the format of the game resulting in Thame dropping four of their key players to accommodate the reduced numbers.
On Saturday, September 5, Thame travelled to Marlow for their annual six Rinks fixture and the winning formula returned with Thame winning on 3 rinks, losing on 2 and drawing on 1. The overall score was 131 shots to 100 shots in Thame’ s favour thanks to a big win by the rink skipped by Captain for the Day Bill Giles who led his four of Judy Copley, Ian Rutherford and Terry Emberson to a 27 shot victory. Other winning skips were Les Canfield, Mel Dale with Maxine Plested earning a draw on her rink.
On Sunday in glorious sunshine, Thame welcomed old friends and rivals from South Oxford Bowls Club for yet another thoroughly enjoyable game of 6 Mixed Rinks. Although Thame won on 3 Rinks they were narrowly beaten by just 13 shots overall 103 shots to 116. Winning rink once again involved Thame Bowls Club Chairman Bill Giles who together with Maire Duncan, Barbara Waters and skip Casper DuPreez won by 5 shots. Mel Dale and Club Captain John Timms were the other winners for Thame.
