So today I would like to feature an appeal which was posted on a Facebook site. It ran as follows:
"My grandad, Fred Squires, was collecting money for the British Legion outside Lidl Wymondham today, as he does around Wymondham on a regular basis. Somebody, somehow has taken the family medals he had with him. The area has been thoroughly searched. Grandad has been to the police over the road to report. These have been a part of our family for hundreds of years so, as you can understand, we are devastated! If anyone has ANY info that was at Lidl this afternoon please don’t hesitate to contact us. Thanks!!"
It was posted by Frankie Spurdin.
This particularly affected me because I spent much of the day working on my book on Le Paradis Massacre. I spent hours writing about the bravery of men I will never know who fought for our country in the Second World War - men just like Fred.
I do find writing about these men difficult as I continually visualise myself in their place. I am aiming to have the book finished by the end of the year as I now have a publisher interested.
But I do so hope that somebody knows who has Fred's medals and returns them. They may not be worth a huge amount but they are priceless to the family. I have taken the liberty of taking the picture of Fred off the internet and reproducing it with this blog.
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There seems to be a growing groundswell in the village of people saying enough is enough when it comes to more development. I have spoken to a number of neighbours about the ridiculous proposals for a care village across the fields from where I live and the additional pressure this will put on services already stretched to breaking point.
My friend and South Norfolk Councillor for Hethersett Phil Hardy is one of many saying enough is enough. Phil has been brave enough to go public on the matter and another article is on the Eastern Daily Press website.
I have been mulling over the possibility of organising a public meeting to discuss development and the lack of facilities. It would be good to let the powers that be know how strongly people feel about the devastation that over development and continued development will have on our village and I know I'm not alone. This is happening all over the country and is being led by sheer greed rather than the need for thousands and thousands of new homes. Yes we need some development but we must have the facilities in place beforehand and there has to be a limit. This seems so obvious to me that I can only believe that there are hidden agendas at work here.
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On Wednesday night, we had our first meeting of the Friends of Hethersett Library group and as the chairman said afterwards "it was good to be able to get together again."
It's going to be a fairly low key re-start for the group and we are looking at 2022 for a series of talks which will take place on Wednesdays at 7 pm. These will be every two months on the second Wednesday of the month.
It will kick off on February 9th when village archivist Gary Wyatt will be giving a slide show and talk on some aspect of Hethersett History.
June 8th will see an appearance by the Widow Kett (isn't that intriguing?), August 10th will see Norfolk author Phyllida Scrivens talk about her latest book "The Great Thorpe Rail Disaster". Other dates are April 13th and October 12th with speakers still to be arranged.
Incidentally the Colour Me Calm group will be starting up again at the library from next Wednesday from 11 am.
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On Thursday I popped along to our Memorial Playing Field for the planting of an oak tree as part of the celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee on 2022. I will have some pictures and details of this in tomorrow's blog. I will be submitting a story on this with photographs for the local media.