- Tuesday 15th May at Bury St Edmunds. Meet at Abbey Gardens gateway 10.45 for 11.00. A town and riverside walk. 60 - 75 minutes.
- Wednesday 16th May at Dalham. Meet 10.45 for 11.00 start. Park at the church on top of the hill overlooking the village. 60 to 75 minute circular walk. Mainly paths and tracks and some quiet road walking. No stiles but gentle hills and good views.
- Tuesday 19th June at Denston. Meet at Denston village hall 10.45 for 11.00 start. A longer walk of 100 to 110 mins. Skirts the grounds of Denston Hall. Mainly field edges and parkland. No stiles but gentle hills.
- Other venues are further afield - Lavenham, Arger Fen, Walsham, Debenham, Santon Downham but if you wish for details please phone me (Roger Medley) 820551
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Bones and joints permitting, by the time you read this, we shall be back in Orgnac, having completed our longest absence since we first bought La Dame Verte. All should be well. Ian and our Swiss friends have passed by the house frequently during the winter, and kept their eyes skinned for signs of anything untoward. Perhaps we lost a tile or two when the Mistral was blowing at its most ferocious, but nothing more serious. Ian will have pruned the olives by now. Mollie’s Italianesque garden, with its stretches of gravel and formal planting areas, will be an altogether different matter. It is doubtless be a tangle of exuberant, unrestrained growth with luxuriant weeds of every description vying with our precious shrubs and flowers. Ian doesn’t do gardening, you see. His only attempts at horticulture are reserved for the growing of marijuana. These illicit plants are his ‘secret garden’, furtively sown in old pots, pans and tin cans, and hidden away, not from the prying eyes of any passing gendarmes, who probably wouldn’t recognise them and couldn’t care less if they did, but in an attempt to thwart thieves who share Ian’s taste for the odd joint. Needless to say, given the climate of the South of France, it’s not necessary to be an Alan Titchmarsh to grow a successful crop of hemp!
The precociousness of the seasons these nowadays means we will have missed most of the Spring which begins with the almond blossom, as white as a wedding veil. Soon the apricots brave a late frost to look as if they had been sprinkled with pink icing sugar. Peaches and nectarines follow, the deep pink flowers somehow hinting at the lusciousness of fruit to come. Last of all are the cherries, ‘loveliest of trees’ as Houssman called them, seeming for all the world as if a sudden fall of snow had covered them, the charcoal colour of their branches contrasting with the white blossom above grey limestone so that a cherry orchard looks like a Van Gough come to life. No wonder the sad genius painted so many masterpieces during his troubled stay in Provence.
However early the Spring may be, the natives do not emerge from their winter chrysalises until Easter, or Paque as it is called in France. Intriguing isn't it, that Christian Brits named the most important feast in the calendar after a pagan goddess of the Spring, while the rest of Christendom chose the surely more relevant Jewish word for the Passover? Anyway, no use hoping for one’s favourite restaurant or bistro will open its doors just because the sun is shining. You must wait till Easter Sunday. So, by the time we arrive, we shall be able to eat where and what we like, and the supermarkets will be stocking fresh milk, salted butter, sliced plastic bread and HP Sauce, just as if the tourist invasion had already started, which it won’t have. Deo gratias!
You will have already detected by now a strong whiff of nostalgia, a ‘can’t wait to get there’ feeling like a child on a trip to the sea-side. This is not to be taken, in any way, as an indication of an all-consuming desire to leave Suffolk far from it; simply proof of how possible it is to develop a deep affection for more than one place, and, what is more, to feel at home somewhere that isn’t Wickhambrook, or even England for that matter. In a sense, this feeling has come as something of a surprise to me, and yet it shouldn’t. From the time of my first experience of continental Europe, I have never felt alien or out of place there. As a matter of fact, North America, which I have visited many times, seems to me much more foreign, more strange than Europe. Now, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of you aren’t thinking my Europhile attitude shows I must have a Spaniard, Italian or a Frenchman lurking somewhere in my ancestry. Well, apart from a few drops of Celtic blood, my wife and I are solidly Anglo-Saxon from way back, and mainly of East Anglian extraction, so DNA has nothing to do with how I feel about Europe. An eminent Belgian historian has argued that the crucial difference between the European countries depends upon whether or not they were ever part of the Roman Empire. Barbarism, he would say, begins at the Rhine (and Hadrian's Wall). A bit harsh on Germany, Poland, Russia, Scandinavia and, of course, Ireland and Scotland wouldn’t you say? On second thoughts…. No, I’m only joking, Scotland and Ireland are fine, if you can stand the climate, but my internal compass always seems to be pointing south
The French cockerel has been crowing rather loudly of late, what with the beefy boys of the Basque country snatching the Six Nations Championship from the Irish at the last gasp, the opening of the high speed rail link to Germany, and the world record that went with it, hardly surprising that our Gallic friends are feeling chipper. They are also looking forward to something of a new dawn for the second oldest republic; I’m referring to the Presidential elections. Most French people, I suppose, will be glad to see the back of jaunty Jacques Chirac, the ‘Tricky Dicky’ of French politics. I’ve no idea who will take his place, but at least my left-wing friends in the South will not have to repeat their amusing protest at the 2002 election. You may remember how the Socialists made a complete hash of the first round voting and found themselves having to choose between Chirac, widely seen as corrupt, and Le Pen, a fascist and a racist. Reluctantly they voted for Jacques, some of them wearing clothes pegs on their noses and rubber gloves on their hands! I’m rather glad we don’t elect our Head of State, but cheerfully put up with whatever heredity provides. Now that really is all about DNA.
A bientot!
Tony Bowers
Finance Matters
What risk?
Some people treat their investments as a gamble and can be highly speculative, while others like to play safe and will only put their savings in a bank or building society account. Most people are happiest somewhere between these two extremes, according to their attitude to risk.
An asset with a large potential return usually carries the greater risk of losing some or all of the original investment. However, even apparently low risk investments carry some risk. For example, many bank and building society accounts have not kept pace with inflation and have effectively lost some of their value.
Elderly people, in particular, can suffer from a higher inflation rate than the rest of the population. This is because of the kind of things and services that they buy. One recent estimate for pensioner inflation was about 9%. This is about double the current Retail Prices Index and shows that the savings made by the elderly are therefore even more at risk.
The best way to safeguard your savings is to build up a diversified portfolio according to the level of risk that you are happy with.
Diversification
Diversification is an essential, but often underestimated, part of investment planning. It is important for reducing risk, and is one of the primary considerations for any medium to long-term investment portfolio and generally means ‘Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!’ Its main aim is to improve overall performance while making the level of risk acceptable.
Therefore an ideal investment portfolio should hold a range of investments, thus allowing any poor performers to be compensated for by good performers. These investments can include shares from different companies, market sectors and geographical areas, and other assets, such as commercial property, cash and bonds. The most effective diversification is achieved by holding assets that behave differently as circumstances change (poorly correlated with each other).
Using appropriate collective funds is a cost-effective method of building a diversified portfolio of investments, and preferable to holding individual shares, particularly if a share portfolio is less than about £100,000. It is not cost- effective to hold small quantities of individual shares as dealing costs become disproportionately high. With collective funds, such as unit and investment trusts, you can effectively invest in hundreds of companies for £1,000 or less.
Of course, no investments should be made without considering the use of tax-efficient wrappers such as ISAs, pensions and insurance bonds. All of these wrappers can reduce your tax significantly, depending on your situation.
Further information
Please contact me (details as per BV Services advert) or take a look at www.bv-ifa.co.uk.
Please note this article contains general information only and should not be viewed as specific advice.
John Bramwell
BV Services is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority
Where Have All The Buses Gone?
Over the past few weeks, I have been speaking to many local people about the ‘missing buses’ in Wickhambrook and the surrounding area.
Too many times, the schduled bus has not appeared, and left villagers standing shivering and waiting for lengthy periods, before returning home in frustration, or desperately trying to find an alternative way of getting to their destination.
This has been the case with the bus that is supposed to transport passengers from the village, and also those from Stradishall. The explanation from the privately-owned bus company, is that a driver hasn’t turned up for work. So, does this mean, then, that there are no drivers available to replace them? I am quite sure that all the bus services in Bury St Edmunds, for instance, continue to run! So why cannot a driver be transferred from one of those ‘around town’ services to replace the missing one?
There is also the serious problem that if you manage to reach Bury, there is no guarantee that you will be able to get a bus back home!
I believe it is time for everyone to get together and have a meeting, with representatives of the bus company, the local Councillor, our Member of Parliament, and anyone else who has an interest in maintaining an efficient, reliable bus service for Wickhambrook and the surrounding villages.
Ron Weir
