April 1999
At the end of the spring term St. Paul’s School will lose one of its most highly valued and respected members of staff. Pam Dawe has worked at the school as a lunchtime supervisor for almost 31 years, from the days of walking the children down the road to get their lunch to the relative luxury of the present day. She is now looking forward to her well deserved retirement.
I expect Pam might well relish the prospect of a quiet weekday lunch without 200 children to get in the way! There again, knowing how much Pam loves being with the children, she will undoubtedly find it hard at first to spend a lunchtime without them.
Pam has worked tirelessly for the school. She is one of a kind and has always shown total commitment in everything she has done in support of the school. She always has the best interests of the children at heart and she has succeeded, without exception, in building strong and lasting relationships with the children and staff. Whenever the children have needed individual care or supervision, whenever a child has been hurt or upset, Pam has been there for them.
The children know Pam as “Auntie Pam” and despite efforts to change this title from time to time, it has always stuck. For the past 31 years she has certainly kept watch over her large “school family” and what a superb job she has done.
without which she would not have achieved as much as she has. She has always maintained discipline and yet she has the total respect and friendship of the children. Pam has given generously of her time to situations both within and outside her working hours. She listens patiently and treats every child equally, fairly and with affection. Pam values every child.
I am sure someone must have sat down and worked out just how many children and staff have come into contact with Pam over the years both in the old school and in the present building. I wonder how many plates have been scraped, how many injuries treated and how many tears dried!
We are going to miss Pam terribly. I don’t think it has yet sunk in that she won’t be back after Easter, hard as I have tried to hang on to her. (I have even resorted to throwing money at her!) We are all hoping, however, that we will be seeing Pam at the school on a regular basis at future events.
Pam has decided that the time has come to join her husband, John, in retirement. We all wish them a long and happy retirement and we hope that Pam will treasure her memories of St. Paul’s School for many years to come.
Thank you Pam.
With our love and best wishes.
Lyndon Evans. On behalf of everyone at St. Paul’s School
GUESTS OF HER MAJESTY
Giles and I will be among the voluntary guests at HMP The Mount on 23 April, together with the High Sheriff and a number of other notables from around the County. We shall be served a normal prison dinner, locked up for the night and given prison breakfast before being let out the next morning.
Every guest has undertaken to raise over £100 and the money will go in equal third parts to the Children’s Society - which runs projects to keep children awaiting trial out of prison - to HACRO - which is working to provide mentors for young offenders leaving prison - and to The Mount itself for the new Visitors Centre. The costs will be minimal. A similar event was organised at Brixton Prison last autumn, with Lord and Lady Woolf and Michael Howard among the ‘guests, and raised a sum well into five figures for Macmillan Nurses.
HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY
With all the furore about genetically modified crops that’s around at the moment, I’m even more pleased than usual to be growing my own, or at least some of my own. As usual there are successes and failures in the vegetable plot - the autumn sown broad beans are coming on a treat, as are the lettuce in the cold greenhouse. However, the lettuce which were intended to overwinter outside disappeared without trace a long time ago, the overwintering spinach is distinctly sporadic and as for the spring cabbages - well, the less said about that the better!
Never mind, April is the month when things really start up again but I shall be aware of the possibility of frosts and resist anything too tender at the moment. I always feel that if you’re not sure if it’s the right time or not, it’s always best to wait as everything has a habit of catching up in the end.
For many people the gardening year doesn’t really start until Easter. Good Friday is the traditional time to plant potatoes and although there isn’t much logic to this as the date varies each year, I shall be putting in a few rows over the weekend. I’m gradually moving over to the no-dig, organic school of thought and this year I haven’t dug the potato patch at all but have given it a good mulch of well rotted manure and the tubers will simply be planted with a trowel. Meanwhile, I’ve been to the Society’s shop and stocked up with fertilizer for both the roses and the lawn. The roses have been pruned, so a good sprinkling should do them a power of good. I’m a little worried about the lawn though - after a thorough raking to eliminate the moss there may not be much grass left to feed!
We have started the process of finding out the level of interest in the village to developing a Village Design Statement which aims to provide generally agreed guidelines on the features of the village we particularly wish to preserve and enhance and the sort of changes we feel could be desirable. An appeal in Chipperfield News elicited responses from two people who would be willing to work on a team to develop a proposal to put to the village, but more volunteers are needed.
Clir. David Nobbs
MOTHERS & TODDLERS
Tuesday mornings have now taken on a certain wacky feel - not to be missed! My first venture to the Village Hall was with baby Daisy, aged one. Why had I waited twelve months? One reason was that I was worried that my precious baby was going to be trampled on. Not so: I found a cordoned off area with special toys just for babies with good quality and clean baby rockers and other new Mums with their tales of the sleepless night before. Babies of any age are truly welcome.
Another reason why I hadn’t made it to Mothers and Toddlers was my complete inability to get anywhere by 9.3Oam. I thought I would be like a woman in a Batman cartoon with the hall falling silent as I entered at 10 minutes past ten, with everyone staring and whispering behind their hands “She’s the one who can’t get up in the morning!” Late corners, sometime corners - all are welcome!
Whilst everyone knows the importance of getting children to mix, hopefully to make them more sociable creatures, Mothers & Toddlers other raison d’etre is of course getting the mothers together. With all the wonderful equipment that Mothers & Toddlers now have, from slides to cars to cookers, the children soon want to be off exploring and so with one eye on the “darlings”, wonderful friendships are made over cups of tea and coffee. We also have great mothers’ nights out!
So brush up your singing, “If you’re happy and you know it!” etc., introduce your child to Chipperfield high society and get yourself some new friends. It’s Tuesday; it’s 930am; it’s Mothers & Toddlers in the Village Hall.
Sally Thompson (01923 262382) Amanda Hemsley (01923 268184)
THE MOUNT
More prison visitors are required for The Mount, particularly as the number of prisoners held there are due to be increased. If you would like to consider becoming a visitor, please speak to me, Ann Phillips, to find out more about what it entails. (01923268904).
A SIMPLE MESSAGE OF THANKS
This is for the someone who devotes her valuable time, Sometimes it’s better talking face to face than on the ‘phone and spending a dime. She gives somebody else a chance to speak about their life. Because talking to somebody face to face helps to free their mind from trouble and strife. So writing this small message for you has helped me from feeling blue. So this poem of gratefulness I would like to offer you.
It’s nice to know that you did volunteer.
It’s nice to have someone to talk to while I’m staying here. Thanks.
G.Wood, The Mount 1999
CHIPPERFIELD CHORAL
SOCIETY’S MARCH CONCERT
The Barbirolli Hall at St Clement Danes School in Chorleywood was full to capacity last Saturday with an enthusiastic audience for the concert given by Chipperfield Choral Society under the baton of their Director, Delia Meehan, with soloists Emma Bell (soprano) and Michael Dewis (baritone).
Brahms’ great German Requiem, sung in English, was preceded by a stirring account of Sibelius’ renowned tone poem Finlandia, in which the well- loved hymn “Be still, my soul” received a nicely restrained performance from the chorus with suitable fireworks from an unusually large and cohesive orchestra.
The main work in the programme, the Requiem, is a very demanding piece, requiring a huge range of colour and dynamic from both the singers and the instrumentalists. Both orchestra and chorus had the critical mass needed to give the work its full potential - which they did, and more - in an outstanding performance.
THE JOYS OF SPRING
The weather man has just told us that it is the first day of spring and although the weather does not feel much like it, the frogs have no doubt about it! They have been gathering in the ponds for a week or so now, the little males poking their heads out of the water and calling for the much larger females to join them. Soon their favourite ponds will be full to the brim with frogspawn.
One of our most satisfying achievements in the garden has been the revival of the wild daffodils in the goat run. When we took over it was a mass of brambles and the first spring that David tried to shoe them to me we could only find one bloom and a few spindly leaves. Much longer and they would have been completely crowded out. The goats have munched their way through all the brambles now and there were more daffodils than ever last year. We have a lot of cultivated daffs that David’s parents and grandparents planted as well, but my favourites are the little wild Lentem Lillies, as my mother always calls them. They are only three or four inches tall and their petals have a strange, almost papery feel to them, not quite as yellow as their trumpets - altogether a charming little plant. I have made sure that the bulb sites are not grazed from just after Christmas until about the middle of June, so that they are not eaten or trampled on and get plenty of time to build up their bulbs after flowering. Sometimes I end up with so funny shaped sheep and goat pens but it’s well worth it for “a host of golden daffodils”.
The sheep now get a daily ration of concentrated food as well as hay and a pair of opportunistic carrion crows hang around each morning to see if there is anything left for them in the trough. So far they have been out of luck, as Beryl makes sure that every last crumb is licked out. As a child I was told “If you
see a carrion crow with its pals it’s a rook, but if you see a rook on it’s own, then it’s a carrion crow”. Unfortunately,
this is not always the case as carrions often feed in flocks
with other members of the crow family in winter. Although they are roughly the same size, the rook has a very distinctive bare face-patch around its beak which gives it a long-billed appearance. We have nick-named one of the Creaking Jaws as he sounds just like a door opening in a horror film!