Author: Sonja Francis

CHILDREN from three Thame primary schools are being given the chance to step up to the stage with BBC One’s MasterChef winner 2013 Natalie Coleman at this year’s Thame Food Festival, by taking part in a competition at their school to say why they want to cook with her.

Year five and year six children at John Hampden County, Barley Hill and St Joseph’s Catholic primary schools are getting their thinking caps on in the hope that they will be chosen to join Natalie when she gives the festival’s first ever cookery demo devised especially for children.

Natalie, who has recently taken up the role of Ambassador of Central Street Cookery School at St Luke’s Community Centre in London, is first up on the demo stage this year with a 45 minute session just for young foodies to sit at. In it she hopes to inspire the children to learn about food and pick up new skills and ideas that they can try when they cook at home.

One lucky child from each school will get the chance to join Natalie, and take home a signed copy of her cookery book1, if they can impress her and festival patron Lotte Duncan, as to why they should get a chance to cook with her. 

“We’re challenging the children to tell us why they want to cook with Natalie and get a place in the spotlight at this year’s Thame Food Festival,” says Lotte. “We know that children love to cook and that being able to cook is a great thing to be able to do. It’s fun and brings the family together, plus it’s a good way to give children valuable skills for life.

“Helping children gain these skills is also a passion of Natalie’s which is why she’s chosen to cook especially for and with them at the festival,” she says. “Now, more than ever it’s important for children to learn about food and get into cooking right from the beginning. Given the children’s reaction to the competition, and the support from their teachers, I know we’re going to get some fantastic reasons why they should cook with Natalie and we can’t wait to see them rise to the challenge on the day,” she adds.h

The three competition winners will be announced in the run-up to the Thame Food Festival and appear with Natalie Coleman on the cookery demo stage at 10am on Saturday, 26th September.

Thame Food Festival takes place from 9am to 5pm on Saturday 26th September 2015 in the heart of Thame town centre. www.thamefoodfestival.co.uk

THE refugee crisis currently gripping Europe really hit home over the weekend, whilst a group of Thame residents were visiting the town’s twin town of Montesson in France.

Also visiting Montesson at the same time, to celebrate both the annual ‘fête du pâté à la Carmen’ and its own town’s 25 year-old twinning with Montesson, were visitors from the German town of Baesweiler. Suddenly, later on Saturday evening, after the three towns had enjoyed a communal meal and entertainment together, the Mayor of Baesweiler, Willi Linkens, received a phone call informing him that this town had been allocated a number of refugees by the German government. The shocked Mayor had to quickly give his apologies to his hosts and return home in order to organise accommodation for the refugee families – in a town with apparently only one empty social property; a challenge indeed for any Mayor.

In the footsteps of Rommel

Earlier that day, the Thame Twinning visitors had enjoyed a trip out to the fascinating Chateau du la roche Guyon, which had started out as a medieval keep hewn out of a rock cliff, gradually added to over the next few centuries to become a family home, until it was taken over by Field Marshall Rommel in 1944, as his head quarters. Here Rommel had rooms dug out of the cliff as a bunker from where he attempted to defend Normandy from immanent invasion by the allies. These days, the chateau’s state rooms and outbuildings, and the vegetable gardens have  been slowly restored to a semblance of their former glory after years of vandalism and decay.

Long lost gardens

As well as exploring the period furnished rooms of the chateau, which included four famous wall tapestries depicting the life of Esther, those fitter members of the group were treated to a guided tour of the steep footpath all the way to the top of the old tower. As they wend their way, they learned about the spectacular terraced gardens, now long over-grown, designed by Lancelot (‘Capability’) Brown and Alexander Pope, that once graced the route with views across the Seine. The way down was by way of 321 stone steps cut out of the rock!

Strolling in the Paris sunshine

Following torrential rain throughout the coach journey to France on the Friday, Saturday’s warm sunshine was repeated on the Sunday, the final day of the visit spent either exploring the famous street market at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, taking part in an out-door church service in Montesson itself or spending the free time before heading back to Thame, in other ways with host families. Heading off to meet the coach home, there was just time to wave off the ingenious and colourful floats of the Montesson annual carnival parade.

Drama at the border

The journey back to Thame via a short break at the Baie de Somme service station and ‘Le Shuttle’, was not without incident, including a delay at the Calais border when one Thame Twinning member mislaid his passport, finding it in a forgotten pocket just before Passport Control was about to cancel his passport in case it had found its way into the wrong hands.

Luckily, the hour gained on their return from the time difference in France, meant that the Thame group arrived home laden with their wine, jams and other goodies, in time to be assured of a contented, good night’s sleep after a fun and interesting long weekend among friends.

Already plans are being hatched to recognise the 15th anniversary of the twinning between Thame and Montesson, when the Montessonaise come to Thame early in May 2016. Watch this space for a very special celebration.

WONDERFUL skies and bright sunshine arrived just in time last Thursday (17/09), after the previous day’s down pours which threatened to turn Thame Show ground into a muddy mess. As it turned out, the few muddy patches were easily avoided and most people had come suitably shod ready to enjoy themselves whatever the conditions.

Chris Parker, the Show Director of the Thame Show, said: “We are really pleased with the way the show went this year. We’ve had some great feedback about what people were able to see and do, and we expect the visitor numbers to be at least as good as last year; we’ll know the final figures by Wednesday.

“It was particularly encouraging to see so many hundreds of school children enjoying themselves and learning at the same time. We went out of our way this year to provide them with their own stage for the joint singing, a proper sound system, work sheets to go with the activities, and even their own security, all of which we funded oursleves, and all the children were allowed into the show free.

“This was all part of the Thame Show putting something back into Thame which is as it should be, and we will be doing the same next year.” The school children, accompanied by teachers and helpers, were able to get involved in bread baking, watch and learn about glass blowing, and traditional hurdle-making among many activities provided especially for them.

As well as providing a great day for the farming community to meet up with friends as the busy harvest season draws to a close, local families and visitors from further afield were able to browse the many trade stands for country clothes, garden furniture, provisions for pets, or stock up with interesting oils, cheeses, sausages, foods from other lands, condiments, jewellery and more between watching cookery demonstrations, the horse events, and the entertainments in the main arena. The highlights of the day were undoubtedly for many the hilarious sheep racing and the thrilling stunt riding and chariot racing of the Devil’s Horsemen.

A spell-bound crowd gathered regularly throughout the afternoon to watch fire crews from Thame Fire Station, use specialise cutting equipment and carefully worked out procedures, to cut out a ‘casuality’ trapped in a crashed car. The horse events and dog shows were as popular as ever and an exhibit explaining the progress of the design stage for the new piece of public art that will be installed some time in the Spring, at the new employment centre currently nearing completion opposite the DAF site on the Thame by-pass.

Claude Heath, a former artist in residence at the Henry Moore Institute and a prizewinner in the John Moores Exhibition, has been selected by the developer, Stoford, to produce an eye-catching sculpture for the site, to be called Cotmore Park. The piece of sculpture will be called ‘Colour Spaces’, and will be up to three metres high. Visitor were able to meet Claude and talk to him about his ideas and play with multicoloured, cardboard cubes to explore the concept and take away a special badge to mark the unveiling of the proposal.

Many Thame and district voluntary organisations had stalls to promote their various activities, including Thame Rotary, with a tombola to raise funds for the Medical Dogs charity. Close by, the charity that provides support for bereaved children and young people, See-Saw, provided cream teas from their pop-up cafe throughout the day.

Magnificent specimens of various cattle breed, especially huge, fearsome-looking but surprisingly calm bulls attracted a lot of admiration among the livestock on show, and a display of classic cars and vintage tractors, provided interest for lovers of the combustion engine of all ages.

As always, the Domestic Tent with its rows and rows of pots of jam, cakes, biscuits, giant vegetables and flower arrangements, photography and sewing skills competition entries, all attracted great interest with proud prize winners and their families snapping their offerings on mobile phones for the family album.

Returning the show to its traditional day of the third Thursday in September, has proved popular with the farming community and the visitors, and the organising committee will no doubt be relieved that the weather was kind for what was always going to be a test of resolve, resourcefulness and organisation for the new team behind the Thame Show.

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 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:

“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.

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