Good News for the Local Out of School Club

I have just returned from a couple of days camping with the local Llandrindod Wells 1st Cub and Scout Troup. It was a fantastic few days to celebrate the centenary of scouting. However I stray from the point.......

On my return I have had a letter from the Awards for All Awards sponsored by the Lottery Fund, to tell me that I have successfully applied for £4900 for the club. Hooray.... this is wonderful news. Over the past few weeks I have been frantically applying for all sorts of grants for the school child care club and the school so they can begin or continue with projects, which without grant aid they would never be able to consider. Two weeks ago we had news from Powys County Council that we had been awarded £2000 in capital revenue funding for the child care club, and also, sadly, because another local play scheme closed it;s doors for the last time we were given all their cash funds in accordance with the Charity Commissions ruling, a boost of £6000. Prior to that we received a sustainability grant of over £1000 from Powys County Council to keep us going in order that we could put a rescue plan into place. In the intrim we have had several fundraising activities. My mum has organised a monthly quiz night for the past four months, a couple of table tops sales, organised by the staff,

All this must seem wonderful to read, however as with most grants the stipulations on how to spend the money are very rigorous, and it takes a lot of control when you have all this money to make sure it does what it is supposed to do. As a committee who have struggled financially over the past two years to stay afloat and keep the child care side of things going, we are looking to investing in some publicity so that our service users will increase.

The school have just received a letter to tell them they have received £10,000 to create a wildlife path and chambers on the back field which would be accessible to tall the community out of school hours. I have also applied for a peoples millions grant to create a sensory garden within this scheme, again for use of the community outside of school hours, and I am currently working with the school children so that they can plan and apply for a grant which would enhance their play ground.

There is lots of money out there for different community organisations, however to say it is easy to get is not so. I can spend up to a week costing and researching Key words for grants, different policies etc which will spark the judges, and sadly not all organisations especially schools have the resources or people available to spend this amount of time in order to obtain monies, very often for items which i believe should be part of the normal school budget.
However once again Crossgates school, as with many other schools in Powys have had there budgets cut, reminding us once again that we are the poor cousin to England. How can Welsh Assembly politicians say that one of their prime objectives is education? Our deputy Head left Crossgates School last yer and went to become a head of a primary school in Telford. She had half the number of children there, yet her budget was the same????? recently she has disbanded her PTA as there were only 3 members and she said she had enough money to pay for trips etc out of her ordinary school budget. Wow how fantastic, at Crossgates we have to contribute £1.20 per week to the bus in order to take our children to the local swimming pool for swimming lessons which is part of the National Curriculum. As a PTA the committee works a huge amount of hours throughout the year raising money for Maths Books and Maths Resources, again part of the national curriculum, we give each class money for Christmas craft so they can create the wonderful things which adorn the school at Christmas, believe you me Glitter dosen''t come cheap when it is needed by 160 children!
So tell me Welsh Assembly government where is the equality in the education system between England and Wales. Our children are being discriminated against, they do not have the same resources or financial backing as their English counterparts,. yet they grow up to compete, supposedly on an even playing field to vie for University places, jobs and careers, shape up Mr Carwyn Jones and give our children a future..........

Warm Weather changes Meat Sales

The weekend just gone was what we would class one of our busy weekends. We have Wrexham and Llandrindod Markets on the Friday, and Stourbridge and Aberystwyth on the Saturday. I am suffering from a very bad back and hip presently, an ongoing problem from having severed my coxys four years ago, and had acupuncture and a hip brace on the Thursday, unsure of how I would feel on Friday it was arranged that Colin would accompany me and carry heavy boxes etc and I would do all the talking (I'm good at that!)
Colin unfortunately twisted his ankle whilst catching the ewes to tail, so off we went to Wrexham at 6am on Friday looking like we had returned from a bout in the ring. Colin hobbling, me bent over and limping.
Wrexham had all been altered, apparently to improve sales (we were down on last month), and it was terribly windy. the stalls in Wrexham are not at all suited to the windy spot in which we always find ourselves there and at one point the whole of the top blew off which I instinctively caught hold of in case ti should blow down upon a customer sitting the other side of the stall in a wheelchair. Of course this did my back no good, and within an hour it was hurting beyond belief which pain killers did nothing to relieve. OK accidents happen, but when i went in to report the incident to the person in charge of the market, he, after inspecting the stall and me explaining what had happened said, "well it was all ok when we set it up at 5.100am this morning, and I can't do anything about it now!" I politely reminded him that whatever had happened at 5.00am this morning I was reporting a serious health & safety issue to him and he had a responsibility to do something about it now. So he found a huge ball of string and tied the top half of the stall to the bottom half of the stall and said that would hold it.
Beware all you marketeers.... of men in disguise. A suit doesn't always mean brains!!!!

Fox Cubs on the Ross

Yesterday, after I had collected Jess from the local child care club, we were driving backdown the road to our house, past a piece of our neighbours ground which we call The Ross. he has recently fenced it off and planted a very young hedge, it is probably entered into an enviromental scheme.
Jess pointed to the gorse bush and said "look mum two rabbitts, no two cats, no I think it's two little foxes!"
She was right two small fox cubs, the size of cats were playing by the gorse bush, no sign of a larger adult. I pulled the car in by the road put the window down and turned off the engine. the two didn't even acknowledge our presence they carried on scampering and play fighting, jumping over each other.
Jess was thrilled to bits,"I've never seen two fox clubs playing before she said" and I had to admit that I never had either.
During Lambing time I had seen a big wirey fox several times in broad daylight hanging around the bushes or crossing the road so he was obviously something to do with them. There has also been an explosion of rabbit population in that area and so they have obviously had plenty of rabbit pie to dine on, and that's why we didn't loose many lambs this year.
As we moved on Jessie said "it's very strange mum, you wouldn't think that a fox and a rabbit would make very good next door neighbours"
Too right Jessie that's the law of nature.....................