Rudston Newsletter

February 1997. Editor Barbara Lingard

This month’s newsletter generously sponsored by Tony Proctor & Son, Plant Hire.

Colin and Sue would like to thank everyone for their best wishes and cards on their recent engagement.

MARIE CURIE CANCER CARE

Nation-wide events have been organised to support this appeal and the

Bring & Buy sale held in the Village Hall Rudston on Saturday 18th January raised the sum of £286.47 - Everyone enjoyed the fun

Many thanks to all who came and supported the event and to all those who helped with the various stalls and activities.

Thanks to the organisers, Annabel Macdonald, Alison Cope, Julie Lockwood and Christine Turner and not forgetting Ken Tattershall for his excellent running of the raffle.

Anything surplus items that remained after the event were distributed to various local charity shops.

There were photographers from various local newspapers has anyone seen the pictures?

Scarcely have we recovered from Christmas and we’re on the threshold of Lent again, that time of year when we try to take stock of our lives in the light of the Cross, and in the light of the way Jesus asked us to live our lives. Traditionally, people gave things up; now, people are encouraged to do extra things - and if you think you might need encouraging, let me encourage you to think of going to our Lent course !

But what’s it all about ?

There has been a lot of comment recently, at least in the church press, as to how people are unwilling to take the blame these days. It’s not my fault; I’m only doing what I was told. It’s society’s fault for letting them down. The fault lies with the parents. Blame the system. In fact, blame anything apart from yourself !

But if we take a simple ( and non-religious ) issue such as the state of the environment, then we can see how we are responsible in our small way, and our small faults add up to society’s failing. Do you save your bottles and take them to a bottle-bank ? ( I do ! ) If not, how can you complain about the wastefulness of others ? Do you try not to use your car if at all possible ? ( I don’t ! ) If not, how can you complain at others who pollute the environment ? We all have our part to play - we all live here, and we are all, in our own little ways, responsible for our society at large.

Jesus recognised that. He told us to take the plank out of our own eyes before we try to remove the speck of dust from our brother’s eyes. And that is what Lent is there for - to look at ourselves and to find those planks, those problems in our own lives, be they problems of lifestyle or problems of relationships, and to try to remove them.

Some things certainly need speaking about, in our village as in our world. Yet - while people seem about as happy to accept constructive criticism as they are to accept blame these days, they will never ever listen to a pot calling a kettle black.

Let’s make this Lent a time for cleaning our personal pots ! Stephen

With daylight Hours slowly lengthening the first signs of a revival of activity in the natural world can be seen on the finer winter days. Blackbirds, song and mistle thrushes and great tits have begun to sing a few brief snatches of their repertoire and mallards in particular are busy displaying to attract mates. Both mistle thrushes and mallards are very early breeders often nesting when there are no leaves on the trees and when there is still snow on the ground respectively.

Recently though bird feeders have been the principal source of sightings with greater spotted woodpecker and coal tits being a couple of the more unusual sightings although a large unidentified bird of prey, probably a goshawk, was seen to take a blackbird which was at a bird feeder and carry it off.

The kingfisher has made sporadic visits to the Village Hall area of the Gypsey Race but lack of water in the village has obviously restricted it’s opportunities but in the deeper areas towards Thorpe a goldeneye duck has found conditions to it’s liking and timed it’s arrival to perfection coinciding with the countrywide ban on shooting wildfowl.

The barn owls which bred successfully in the area last year have remained all winter and are regularly seen patrolling the nearby roadside verges so there must be a good chance that they will breed in the area again but it is unlikely that they will use the same site.

Around Christmas a common shrew was watched for quite a long time zig-zagging across Eastgate foraging for food completely oblivious to both humans and cars, which fortunately for the shrew passed at such times that it went between wheels rather than under them. It was also fortunate that it did not encounter any of the multitude of cats in the area. One less fortunate animal was a deer killed on the Bridlington road which mysteriously disappeared very quickly. In the last couple of days there have been two or three reports of frogs being seen in ponds in spite of ice and they have included an albino which I have never seen before.

Insects have been few and far between but both small tortoiseshell and peacock butterflies have been reported in hibernation, there have been a few reports of winter moths both on outside lights and in car headlights and on one of the milder evenings recently the appropriately named early moth was recorded.

The next meeting is to be held on Wednesday, 5th February, in the Village Hall at 7.30 pm. A reminder to all, and especially newcomers to the village, that you are welcome to observe. Notices of meetings and anything else of interest are normally placed in two or three places in the village - the notice board on Eastgate near the bridge, the shop notice board, or the board at the end of Long Street ( opposite pub). Very occasionally one will be of such a size that the only place left is the bus shelter opposite Ivy Cottage, this would normally be something which we are obliged to display, probably by East Riding Council or someone.

Those with good memories will remember my mention of the Auditors before Christmas. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because they found a couple of small points ! One was an omission on my part and the other connected with clerk’s salary ( ah-hem ! ) Anyway, nothing to affect any actual figures, so the accounts balanced.

On the subject of Funding for the year commencing 1st April, the Parish Council have agreed on no increase to last year. ( How nice if the East Riding Council could say the same ).

Having already had our first spell of bad weather before the last meeting, questions were asked about treatment of roads and whether the whole village may be included on the grounds that it is a bus route. The answer I received fairly quickly includes a repeat of the statement that the B1253 is a priority route and will continue "to be treated prior to the onset of freezing conditions" and reasons why that may not always appear to be the case. The second query was dealt with in one sentence: "The Council does not have any policy on the treatment of school bus routes, as this would include almost every road in the County." Which is fair enough. By coincidence, a few days after that, I saw that the same question had been asked elsewhere in the area following a school bus skidding, and reported in the paper.

At the same time when East Riding Council is under fire for cramming everything in Bridlington into the Town Hall, I note in their newsletter that there is also to be a "Customer Service Centre" in there. The list of things you will be able to to do there is rather lengthy, but I suspect most of them you will have been able to do before somewhere.

P. Crossland ( Clerk )

I would like to thank everyone that has reported incidents to me in the last two months.

There was a stolen van abandoned in the village and due to the prompt action of an observant person the van was soon recovered by it’s owner. The police were very pleased with the result and thanked the person for being so observant.

There has been a spate of thefts of garden statues in the village, if anyone knows anything about these thefts the police would like to hear from you.

I have had several reports of suspicious vehicles, one was very interesting to the police, and there still seems to be a lot of poaching going on in the area. The gamekeeper at Thorpe was very pleased when I was able to inform him of shooting going on in the woods down Southside Lane, I could only tell him because someone phoned me to let me know.

If you see anything that is wrong please let me know, I will decide if the police should know, but if anything does happen at least we have something to go on. If you see a crime taking place please phone police on a 999 call to save vital time. The police need our help to help them fight crime, so be aware of things it is not being nosy and report anything that is different.

Julia Overfield,

The Dangerous Wood

I stood in the dense mossy green wood

The trees roared like raging lions in the still breeze

Shooting sounds from the farmer’s shotgun

which made me feel jumpy.

Tangling ivy took over the soldier like trees,

Ransoms made my eyes water with their smell of garlic

Springy bouncy ivy like a trampoline to walk on

I felt like I was trespassing in someone else’s wood

A spider scuttled into the dead damp leaves

A bounded flash of the rabbit which

made me jump out of my skin!

Franky Woods