SNIPPETS

The 2008 Annual Parish Meeting will take place in the Village Hall on Monday 31 March at 8 pm. This is a public meeting open to all who live in the Parish. The Chairman of the Parish Council, David Coleman, will give his report about what has been happening over the past year. It is a chance for residents of Pembury to put questions to Parish, Borough and County Councillors. The councillors want to hear your views and your ideas about the future of the village. This is the place where you live - take part in its life.

A very enthusiastic Bill Foord of HighField Close rang up to offer congratulations to the author of Rosie’s Recipes in the Winter 2007 edition. He had seven friends over after Christmas and cooked them the Roast Goose with Fruity Stuffing (page 36). He said it was "Fantastic!" He was going to cut out the recipe and save the recipe and no doubt use it again. Our colleague Rosie Bass was very chuffed that Bill had enjoyed it.

For those connected to the Internet, there is an email link to the Kent Highways on the PVN site (www.pembury.org) and also a hyperlink direct to the Kent Highways Fault Reporting Form.

We regularly receive information from West Weald Watch about crime in the area and have a couple of recent examples for you to ponder.

A Tunbridge Wells man was approached by another man who said he was a taxi driver and needed some change. While the first man was looking in his wallet a third man came up snatched it out of his hand. We all want to help other people, especially with such normal requests, but perhaps we should be a little more careful in these circumstances.

The other example is where a house in Pembury was burgled and 4 passports stolen. Other valuables were left, so this was probably targeted at the documents. One commentator said that a helpful hint was to have a photocopy of your passport showing the photo page with all the coding so that the stolen documents can be more easily reported and hopefully traced. Obviously, these photocopies should be kept carefully in a safe place completely separate from the original documents.

If you have information about a crime, contact numbers are 01732 379217 or Kent Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

In the last edition, we publish a reminder about the Village Events Calendar run via the Pembury Village News website (www.pembury.org), but unfortunately made a mistake in the email address! However, things have moved on and Janet Ditchett, who runs it, now has a new email address: jmditchett@pt-c.co.uk . Her telephone remains 822586.

So if you want to look up details of an event or check your planned event doesn’t clash with another, do consult it. If you are arranging or have an arranged an event, do let Janet know and she will post it in the calendar for you.

The Parish Council is arranging to have the War Memorial on Hastings Road cleaned and refurbished and would like to check that the list of names is accurate. The oldest names are those from the Second World War. However, British service personnel have taken part in campaigns in almost every year except for one since then. The War Memorial commemorates publicly those who have died in service to their country in military action. If you know of anyone whose name should be on there for campaigns since 1945, please let the Parish Clerk know with a note of their birth and death dates, who they served with and place of death. Full contact details for the Parish office on page 38.