SPRING 1998             Issue 69

Sunday March 22nd 11.15 a.m. all welcome For other Holy Week and Easter services, see p.3

CHURCH NEWS

Easter lilies for remembrance. Contact Mrs Harris.

The Third Stage of Life

Maybe it's autobiography, but it's the third stage that interests me especially the mid-life transition into it, that Jung talks about. In a healthy society clergy have most to do with the first stage - helping people lay moral and spiritual foundations for their life - but that only happens in Britain where there is political will for it, and at present that is missing as in Britain we prefer still to celebrate our partial freedoms than to learn what it means to live well. By the time we enter the third stage, however, some do get a sense of what is missing in our busy life and want to pause, and consider, and perhaps begin an inner journey of exploration or new ventures in social commitment. It's that borderland of prayer, political action and personal identity that religions help define. It's worth thinking about, and even learning to practice, but the codes take some deciphering, so many prefer something less demanding.

Rest in peace

CONGRATULATIONS

FAREWELL

Warmer horizons Pays away from December the 21st, a planet earth cloud burst. Blizzards, Snow, Everything hanging in white, helping make the night light. The next morning cold torrential rain, water on the brain. Under a tree, flowering yellow winter Aconites, like many miniature warm suns, towards them the winter season runs.
Coming Down Creatures all at a stir, at the beginning of a new year. Pays a little longer, soon the sun will be stronger. Spring flowers pushing out of the earth, at this year birth. New beginnings coming down, life all around. Creatures all at a stir, at the beginning of a new year. Roger Phipps

NATIONAL SPRING CLEAN lst-20th April

• clearing up an area of land where they live
• encouraging people to improve the environment they live in
• spreading the anti-litter message

Millennium preparations

Youth Club red alert

Quiz Night

Moral winners were the Full Monty because they were only two thirds of a team, but actual winners were Old and New (led by Mike and Joan Inston - not really old - and Lisa and Paul - new in Sandford - with a bit of help from the ministry team. The Squad was dissolved after too many victories and Andy Middleton transferred to St Val's massacre.

Scores as follows: Full Monty (4 only) 81 (2nd); Jock Strap 57 (7th); Lynch Mob 42 (11th); 1901 56 (8th); River Rats 75 (3rd); Rudburners 38 (13th); Rock Farm Follies 61(6th); Valentine Taz 43 (9th); Old and New 83 (1st); St Vals Massacre 71 (4th); Hopefuls 43 (9th); Emmerdale Lock 65 (5th); Bar Staff 42 (11th).

Money raised for local organizations - so thanks to everyone for generosity. £290 was raised: £100 for Youth Club, £100 for Toddlers (mainly rental), and £90 for meals prepared in Village Hall for various groups.

DOUBLE THE LINK?

As for the existing Link, the Council agreed to consider the Link committee's suggestion that communications in the village might be better served if one of the Councillors joined the committee and produced up-todate reports on the Council's activities instead of the minutes that are at present often out-of-date.

The Council noted the work of the present editor over several years and expressed appreciation, In turn the Link representatives present thanked Mrs Shepherd for inviting them to the meeting, Mr Inston for his helpful and constructive paper on communications in the village, and Mrs Hutton, Mr Norton and Ms Smithson (Councillors), also present, for their support of the Link committee over the past few years and assurances about the future.

YOUR PARISH COUNCIL MARCH 1998

There is still one vacancy on the Parish Council, so please ask the Clerk for a nomination form if you can give one Monday evening each month, and would like to contribute to Council discussions and decision-making.

Communications in the community: The Link committee and members of the Parish Council have recently held a joint meeting to discuss ways and means of letting people in the village know more quickly what is going on in their village, and on the Parish Council, and how they may be affected. At a subsequent meeting of the PC the following points were agreed:

1. An additional Council noticeboard will be put up on Heyford Hill Lane once the Westbury Homes development is completed.
2. The Link will continue in its present format and be issued four times a year as now.
3. The Council will nominate a member to join the Link Committee, to act in liaison between the two bodies. For the immediate future, Mr.M.Inston will act in this capacity.
4. Council matters of particular interest to the village will be the subject of short articles in the Link submitted by individual members of the Council. This format will, for an experimental period, replace the publishing of verbatim minutes. Please let the Editor know how you like this change, which is a reversion to an earlier style.
5. The Council would like to publish a Link supplement four times a year, between issues of the Link proper, so that current news can reach you more quickly. It is envisaged that the supplement would not exceed four pages. The Link editor cannot take on this extra work herself, but could give advice.

Some items from recent minutes of the Council

Westbury Homes development - Heyford Hill Lane
Agreement having been made to secure the rights and status of existing residents of ex-Hospital houses, permission was granted for this development, and work has started.

Laing's development Heyford Hill
The Parish Council has formally taken over responsibility for the open areas created through this development, and will receive a commuted sum to cover future maintenance.

Oxford Park Homes
Following discussions with the Site Owner involving Cllr Mrs Hazel Hutton, District Cllr Mr John Stimson, and District Council officers, progress is being made with the upgrading of the site, aiming towards 'Model Standard' conditions.

Henley Road Site re-development
The re-development of the site of 7A Henley Road has now been given Planning Approval, following the rejection of several applications which received objections. The site now provides for only two dwellings.

Tree Preservation orders
A survey of trees of significance in the village is being carried out by Cllr Ms Jacqueline Smithson, so as to ensure that any that may be threatened can have Tree Preservation Orders applied. Jacqui will appreciate any help from residents that may be forthcoming to enable her to complete this task.

Roadside maintenance
One of the services which will be reduced as a result of budget cuts imposed on the District Council is roadside maintenance, e.g. grass-cutting. The Parish Council is looking at ways in which it can itself enhance the environment from available funds.

Budget 1998/9
The Parish Council has decided that the Precept for the Village for the coming year will be maintained at the same level as for 1997/8, thus imposing no increased burden on the Council Tax.

Parish councils, churches and burials

The vicar appreciated the Councillors' recognition of his own pastoral responsibilities following a bereavement, and was glad the Council wished to be supportive. He was also keen that the Council and the village understood that the church congregation had to raise money

In a search for indications of local feelings the vicar
    i) invites all non-church-going residents who are willing, to become 'Friends of St Andrews', and so to contribute financially to the Building fund (as many do anonymously through donations, and the church bottle in the Fox, and the Fete, River Run and Quiz Night) and
   ii) has invited the Council to agree with him that areas where the Church serves the whole village (e.g. burial ground and Link magazine) are a possible charge on the precept - as has legally been permitted since 1974 and happens elsewhere. This is already reflected in the contribution made by the Council to the printing of the Link and has subsequently been expressed in a contribution of £200 towards the surgery on the ash tree in the churchyard, which is a beautiful village landmark, and fencing around the new Garden of Remembrance. The sums involved are small, but can be seen as identifying areas of co- operation between Church and Council to the benefit of all. We were pleased that by inviting the Church Council to a meeting the Council Chairman signalled her willingness to allow a proper conversation over matters that concern us all.

'The pool under Sandford lasher, just behind the lock, is a very good place to drown yourself in.' Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
'To die will be an awfully big adventure.' Peter and Wendy, 1928

The treacherous undercurrents of the Sandford Lasher flooded tragically into the fantasy world of Peter Pan and the Neverland one warm summer's day during Eights Week, 1921, when two young Christchurch students drowned together in the pool. One of the victims was Rupert Buxton; the other was his friend Michael Llewellyn-Davies, the much loved adopted son of the author, J.M. Barrie.

In 1897, Sir James began an intense friendship with Sylvia and Arthur Llewellyn-Davies and their family of five young boys. And as he invented stories to entertain George, Jack, Peter, Michael and Nicholas, the magical character of Peter Pan began to take shape in his mind. Later Barrie was to say that Peter was a composite of all five of the Llewellyn- Davies children.
'I made Peter by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame.'
But by 1910, both Arthur and Sylvia were dead, and Sir James, now divorced, had become the children's legal guardian.

In its way, the tale of the boy who wouldn't grow up highlights the tragedy of Barrie's own 'lost boys'. Sir James was devastated when the oldest of the five, George, was killed in Flanders in 1915 aged just 21. But it was Michael, the fourth, who was undoubtedly his favourite. So he was again confronted with grief when, at eleven o'clock on the night of Thursday 19 May 1921, he left his flat in the Adelphi to post his daily letter to Michael. At the entrance he met a reporter, who asked him for more details of the news just received from Oxford about the drowning. Imagine the shock and disbelief- this was the first that Sir James knew of

At the inquest the evidence of the two mill workers, Charles Beecham and Matthew Gaskell, was clear. They had been at the weir, regulating the water for the mill, when they heard shouts and saw two men in difficulties in the pool. Unable to swim, they threw in a life-belt, then Beecham ran to Radley College Boathouse to get help before going to the mill to telephone the police. Some students came back with a boat, but it was too late. There was no sign of either Michael or Rupert, and the boys' bodies were not recovered until the following afternoon.

A week later the Oxford Magazine published an eloquent obituary. The sadness of the writer still echoes clearly across the eighty years that separate us from the tragic young deaths:
'Two House men whose loss would have been more widely and more deeply mourned, it would be impossible to find. They were intimate friends, and in their death they were not divided. It is we who must learn to live without them.'
Most of the London newspapers carried the story on their front pages with headlines such as 'The Pool of Ill-Omen' and 'The Tragedy of Peter Pan'. Barrie never fully recovered from Michael's death. 'What happened', he wrote to Michael's tutor a year afterwards, 'was in a way the end of me.' Later a third inscription was added to the base of the obelisk at the Lasher that already carried details of two previous drowning accidents.

Michael was buried in Hampstead Churchyard on Monday 23 May, close to the grave of his mother and father. 'Peter Pan' had already become one of the most popular of all children's classics. First performed on 27th December 1904, 'Peter Pan or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up' was such a success that its production became an annual Christmas event. It was published in novel form as 'Peter and Wendy' in 1911 and as a play in 1928. J M Barrie was made a baronet, awarded the Order of Merit and received several honorary degrees. Before his death in 1937, he donated the perpetual rights of his beloved children's story to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

for Michael Sobell House, who need volunteers to join their team of bereavement support visitors. If you are a warm, empathic person with time to spare and use of a car, you are invited to an introductory evening to find out more - a chance to meet existing volunteers, hear about the comprehensive training they offer, and discover what this rewarding work involves. Ring 225878.

for HOST, a charity which offers friendship to some of the many international students at university in this country, who miss their own families and rarely have a chance to meet, British people at home. The hosts - aged 18 - 50+, single and married, offer a few days of home life, a break from study, a friendly view of Britain, and often gain as much as they give. ring Margaret Stevens on 01793-765213.