Upton Village

South Oxfordshire

Play Area update – great news

A Play Area Update, at 8:15pm on Monday 18th June 2012

We have some great news to share with you about the play area. Since we last wrote, we have:

  • raised the money for a new play area;
  • chosen a supplier for the equipment;
  • planned out how the play area will look;
  • agreed a schedule for the work;
  • worked with the Parish Council, which has allocated us space for the play area.

After more than eighteen months of hard work, these achievements have all happened in a bit of a rush: a concerted effort by Ros Caffyn was rewarded when WREN confirmed their funding for the project on Friday, and the location and design of the play area were approved at a meeting of the Parish Council this evening!

So we are making progress, but there’s still nothing to show for our efforts and questions remain: when will the new play area be open, and what equipment have we managed to include?

Again, we have some good news – work installing the play area should start tomorrow (Tuesday 19th June) and take about three weeks.

As for equipment, we have done our best to include everything that you told us you wanted: a zip wire; a climbing frame; a fort; a roundabout; a bowl swing; a tunnel… it was quite a long list! We also listened when you told us that you wanted to keep some features of the current playground including the obstacle course, the swings, the slide and equipment suitable for younger children.

That’s all for now – the plan for the new play area should be available on the village website soon, and we will keep in touch with you as we turn our attention to the grand opening!

William Betts
Upton Village Play Area Development Team

Annual Parish Meeting

The Annual Parish Meeting will be held on Monday 16th April, 7.30 p.m. (drinks and nibbles served from 7.15 p.m.) in the Village Hall. 

This is an opportunity to let the Parish Council know how you would like to see the village shape up in the future.   For further information call the Parish Clerk, Clare Lightfoot, on 850486

Coffee Morning at Prospect House

There will be a Coffee Morning in aid of the Children’s Society

at Prospect House (by kind invitation of Simon & Hilary Powell)

on SATURDAY 28TH APRIL from 10.30 – 12.00 noon

Home made cakes, raffle, bring & buy stall.

Donations of cakes would be appreciated.

More information from Hilary 850268 or Clare 850486

Yes, Prime Minister with the Theatre Group

UPTON VILLAGE THEATRE GROUP

YES, PRIME MINISTER

New Theatre, Oxford Thursday 8 March 2012

Many of us remember fondly the original “Yes, Minister” on the television in the seventies and we were not to be disappointed by the new “Yes, Prime Minister”. The play is bang up to date as we are immersed in the governing world of financial crisis, the global warming debate, the baffling European Union, the politics of oil and the instability of countries whose names end in “-stan”. The blackberry has replaced the telephone; the civil service messenger is the prime means of communication and the fear of the “Daily Mail” is greater than the fear of the Parliamentary Opposition.

The same magic exists as we laugh at the behaviour of individuals, are dazzled by the language in the soliloquies of Humphrey, and to cap it all there lurks an ever present sense of the absurd. At one point I had tears of laughter running down my cheeks.

Jim Hacker (Prime Minister) was ably portrayed by Graham Seed (Nigel Pargetter of The Archers fame). A Prime Minister may to the public appear supremely powerful but he does not always feel that way. He does not have many troops supporting him against Sir Humphrey’s mighty legions in Whitehall. On the surface he is blundering, vain, self- serving and self- publicising, but he is not always a fool, being crafty and a worthy opponent of Sir Humphrey. Above all he is touchingly human.

If you enjoyed the television series then there is no doubt that you will enjoy this production. A thoroughly entertaining evening.

Ann and Nick Parham

March 2012

Village Hall Drainage and Damage to the Play Area

Many of you will be aware that the drainage system taking waste water from the Village Hall has been blocking up fairly frequently.

A company was engaged to send a camera down the pipe work to ascertain just what was causing the problem and where it was located. According to the scan, roots had penetrated a section of the pitch-fibre pipe at a point under the trees at the edge of the children’s play area.

Remedial work was undertaken this week and unfortunately as soon as the work was started we realised that the camera scan had not given us an accurate picture and that the job was more complex than we had expected. The route of the pipe was not in the direction we were led to believe but went straight across to a point behind the bus shelter passing right underneath one of the supports for the junior swing.

A new section of pipe has now been laid from the hall to a new manhole situated behind the bus shelter with a slight bend to pass under the centre of the swing. The old pitch-fibre pipe was badly misshapen where it had flattened over the 50 years that it has been in place and it is thought that the section that has now been by-passed but remains under the swing is the area that has caused the problem probably due to damage during the construction of the swing or due to it being just inches away from the concrete surrounding one of the stanchions of the swing.

We are sorry that the additional work has resulted in our having to dig up more of the play area than we had expected, a temporary fence has been put in place to protect the area that we will have to re-seed. It will be appreciated if use of the swing could be kept to a minimum for the next 2 months until the area has recovered.

Our apologies to those whose pleasure we are temporarily restricting but please understand the work had to be undertaken.

Mike Brown

On behalf of UVHAT and the Parish Council

Litter Pick

This years Litter Pick is being arranged for Saturday 24th March. If you can spare an hour or two please come along to the Village Hall at about 9.30 where there will be a cup of tea and biscuits awaiting you before setting out to help clean up our parish.

                                                                                Mike Brown

Broadband update

Representatives from the Astons, Blewbury, Upton and West Hagbourne met with BT on Thursday December 1st to discuss exactly how and when local broadband speeds would improve as a result of winning BT’s Race to Infinity. It’s pretty complicated, but here goes with the Campaign team’s attempt to explain what’s happening:

  • The overall effect of the Infinity upgrade will be to make 90% of lines in the Blewbury exchange area capable of speeds of 15Mbit/s or more, with the remaining 10% capable of 2 to 15 Mbit/s. This means that everyone will be able to upgrade to new broadband services delivering speeds at least three times faster than what they’re getting today. The exact names, suppliers and prices of these new services are not yet 100% clear.
  • Two broad kinds of technology are going to be used: Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) and Fibre to the Premises (FTTP). FTTC will take fibre to a total of four street cabinets in the Astons, Blewbury and Upton, and then use existing copper connections to reach individual properties. This will provide the range of faster speeds mentioned above for most of Blewbury and all of the Astons, Upton and West Hagbourne – around 900 lines in all. If you’re lucky, you could get up to 40 Mbit/s initially and up to 80 Mbit/s in the not-too-distant future.
  • FTTP, a new element that has been introduced since the Race to Infinity was won, will take fibre right into individual homes via two street cabinets located on Bessels Way and South Street in Blewbury. This will provide even faster speeds to premises served by those two cabinets – around 360 lines in all. And by faster, we mean seriously faster – at least 100 Mbit/s initially, rising to perhaps 200 to 300 Mbit/s in the future.
  • The technical work on the four FTTC cabinets should be completed between the end of December and early March, with Upton probably the first to go live. As soon as your particular cabinet goes live, you will be able to order your new fibre-based superfast broadband service (although see below for exceptions to this).
  • The technical work on the two FTTP cabinets, and their required sub-networks of smaller ‘nodes’, should be completed by July. If you’re served by one of these cabinets, you will have to wait until then to order your new fibre-based ‘ultrafast’ service.

Clear as mud? It gets muddier. Here are a few more twists in the tail:

  • For those with access to an FTTC cabinet: Just because you can be connected to a fibre-enabled cabinet, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be able to order a full ‘superfast’ broadband service. For example, BT can only sell its superfast service to people whose lines are capable of receiving speeds of 15 Mbit/s or more. If your house is too far away from the cabinet, or there are other technical reasons why your particular line can’t achieve that speed, then you’ll have to choose either a superfast service from a supplier offering a lower speed threshold, or a non-superfast (but still faster than today) service more suited to your line speed. Not surprisingly, this will apply more to those on the outer edges of the exchange area, such as West Hagbourne and parts of the Astons. In fact, we spent some time at the meeting discussing possible additional funding methods for helping West Hagbourne, as under current plans they will have no direct fibre link at all.
  • For those with access to an FTTP cabinet: You might think there’s no downside to 200 – 300 Mbit/s, but bear in mind firstly that you will need a new set of hardware (modem/router) to make it work and secondly that it’s this or nothing, i.e. you will not be able to order an FTTC service instead. (Although, as with FTTC, you will of course still have access to your and other current copper-based services.)

We hope we’ve got all this right: as mentioned above, it’s pretty darn complicated. The easiest, and best, thing to keep in mind is that whatever speed you’ve got now, you’ll be able to upgrade to something at least three times better when all the work is done. For most that will be March (not too far from BT’s original promise of ‘early 2012’) and for the rest it will be July. For some, the results are far better than expected and for others they’re nowhere close, and we’ll probably need until the end of 2012 to figure out whether it was worth all the effort. On balance we think it will be, but by the same token we wouldn’t want to go through it all again!

Campaign Team

Sheepdogs rule the roost at fete

The annual St Mary’s Church Fete took place in Upton on Saturday (3 September).

This ever-popular event retains the character of a traditional village fete, with features such as skittles and tug of war between the Parish Council and the parishioners, as well as the usual sale of homemade cakes, preserves and plants. The Blewbury Brass Band provided the background music next to those enjoying teas outside the village hall.

The main attractions in the arena included the Kineton Quackers, a demonstration of sheepdogs herding ducks, and an Argentine Gaucho. Carlos Adriazola, originally from the Andes, is an extremely skilled lassoist, and he showed off his lasso technique by capturing volunteers from the crowd.

Thank you to everyone who helped make the fete so successful. It seemed to go like clockwork, although we are all aware that a huge amount of hard work is done by everyone involved from setting up in the morning, right through to dismantling in the afternoon.  The result was great, both in terms  the enjoyment of the event and its financial reward – over £2300 was raised for St Mary’s Church and village causes.

Photos from the day can be seen in the photo gallery.

St Mary’s Fete 2011 – Receipts

Stall Stall Holders
Books The Whitmells & Robertsons £291.06
White Elephant Mimi Eighteen & friends £399.95
Preserves Jessie West £293.50
Plants Simon Powell, Austin & Edwin £249.05
Children’s games Fletcher family £14.70
Toys Rhiannon, Emily & Katie £43.04
Cakes Giulia & Brian Rippon £152.10
Fair Trade Maranda St J Nicholl £7.50
Teas Rosemary de Wilde, Liz Hardy & families £312.95
Tombola Clare Lightfoot & friends £148.30
Raffle Sarah Sayers, Mary Wiley, Irene Timblick, Olive & Harry Prior £189.50
Children’s tombola Karen Fenn £29.37
Face Painting Hattie Burrow £69.60
Penalty Shootout Fletcher family £11.00
Skittles Richard Burrow £38.54
Bear’s birthday Eleanor Lightfoot £10.50
Lucky programmes Elisabeth, Malcolm & Judith Wright £179.30
Playground Tombola £41.10
Donations £123.00
Total £2604.06

There are ~£300 expenses to be deducted.