Lately in Thame….newsy niblets

Flash back to the lantern parade Christmas in Thame, 2013

THE orange, blue and white Christmas lights that have lit up the town centre for the past three years are to be replaced for this year, 2014. The town council has agreed a new leasing arrangement for new ‘ Champagne and white’ lights at a cost of £100,000 spread over the period.

The Town Clerk, Helen Stewart, told the Community, Leisure and Recreation committee at its meeting on July 8, that it is hoped that the Christmas lighting could be extended into North Street from this year.

THAME’S Christmas ‘Switch On’ event this year will be on Friday, December 5, and it is hoped by the town council that it will include an even bigger Lantern Parade, real-live Siberian Huskies and a steam railway.

The Christmas celebrations will be extended this year into the Sunday when a ‘Santa Dash’ is planned by the Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity.

THAME Football Club’s financial losses are looking likely to be less than the £20,000 it had budgeted for this year, reported Cllr Mike Dyer to the town council’s Community, Leisure and Recreation committee recently. The club expects its loses to amount to around just £5,000, following an increase in revenue from tournements and private hire of the facilities for dance groups, weddings etc.

Cllr Dyer is Thame Town Council’s representative on the management board of Thame Football Partnership, which has received interest free loans from the town council as well as backing in the form of a Partnership agreement for £50,000 for revenue contingency and £150,000 for capital contingency, during the early stages of the club’s new build on its current site.

Cllr Dyer reported that the club hopes to break even next year, in 2015, four years after it was officially opened by the then Mayor of Thame, Adam Buckland.

AS the 50th Towersey music festival, held every year in the village over the August Bank Holiday, is gearing up, a new book has been published tracing five decades of the popular festival’s history.

The book includes 300 photographs, stories from festival-goers and interviews with many of the individuals who have shaped the much-loved annual event. Towersey Festival: 50 Years In The Making traces the festival’s history from its small-scale beginnings as a one day event in 1965, to its current position as one of the most significant and popular events in the annual folk festival diary.

Derek Schofield’s Towersey Festival: 50 Years In The Making is published on July 23, by Mrs Casey Music Ltd, and is available priced £30 (plus £5 P&P) from: http://www.towerseyfestival.com. Copies can also be purchased at the 50th festival, which runs from Thursday, August 21, to Monday, August 25, and includes performances from Richard Thompson, The Bootleg Beatles and Seth Lakeman, plus a celebration of 75 Years of Topic Records with Eliza Carthy and special guests.

THAME Barns Centre is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year and is planning for a special concert, and an open day later in the autumn for anyone to visit and see for themselves the facilities available in the centre and the work that goes on by the various groups and organisations that use it.

BBC journalist Naga Munchetty with friend, gets ready to tee off

BBC journalist Naga Munchetty has achieved a new low single-digit handicap of nine, and celebrated by competing in a charity golf day in aid of Hearing Dogs for Deaf People at The Oxfordshire Golf Club near Thame, last Friday, July 11.

Naga is a huge dog lover and both her parents use hearing aids, so she was thrilled to be asked to help raise funds for the charity and show off her impressive golfing skills. Naga said; “I’m very conscious of hearing loss since I spend so much time wearing an earpiece. I was delighted to be asked to support the charity golf day and completely fell in love with the gorgeous Cocker Spaniel who helped me tee off!

The charity golf day organised by Vice Captain, Steve Smirthwaite for Club Captain Rob Daniels was very well supported by members, their friends and Hearing Dogs supporters and raised over £24,000.