Recommendations

• Esther recommends Emma from Into the Light Home Healing. "Thank you for the wonderful work you did. I am not sure how it all works but only know that we are a much calmer, peaceful and happier household, which is all I need to know."

• Adam recommends Fare Wise Travel. "Veronica and her staff were life-savers with booking my gap year trip to Vietnam. When Covid hit, they supported me remotely with flight date and airport changes, visa applications and insurance issues."

Local activities

• Seasonal activities at Wasing Wellbeing include Candlelit Sonic Winter Immersion, Solstice Cacao Celebration & Big Christmas Eve Dip (outdoors...)
• Emergency First Aid at Work and Basic Life Support courses in Marlborough 12 Jan.
• Tree planting with Action for the River Kennet in East Grafton and Great Bedwyn.
• Hundreds of online courses with The eLearning Marketplace (based in Newbury) from languages, IT & photography to fitness, nutrition, maths and face-painting.

Eco News

• How to keep Christmas green this year – top tips for a sustainable festive season.
• Sustainable Wantage December News includes good news about British honeybees.
• Volunteers needed to plant 1,600 trees at Crofton in December.
• Record your local wildlife sightings to protect your area from development.
• Drop any used printer ink cartridges at Cartridge UK in Wantage to be recycled for Sustainable Wantage.
• See here for more eco news.

More Christmas...

Features/ Guest Blogs

Good causes

• This week from the Volunteer Centre West Berks - tons of help for voluntary groups.
• West Berks Foodbank 12 Days of Christmas appeal for festive treats by Mon 13 Dec.
• Please donate gifts to West Berks Giving Tree to support domestic abuse victims.
• Please support The Trussell Trust's fight against hunger in the UK this winter when many families face impossible choices between food, heat and light.
• Need motivation to get fit in 2022? Sign up to the Great North Run in Sept 2022 in aid of the Wantage-based Team Mikayla charity which grants wishes for children with cancer.

Restaurant Review

Welcome to our first restaurant review – of The Five Bells in Wickham.

Property and land

• Specialist machined timber can give an extra lift to external and internal work on your home – see latest news from FORT Builders Merchants at Membury.

• For sale: four-bed house, Hungerford. £435,000. Brearley & Rich.
• For sale: five-bed house, Marlborough. £695,000. Brearley & Rich.
• For rent: studio, Kintbury. £800pcm. Nina Clark Lettings.
• For sale: one-bed apartment in Kintbury. £235,000. Audley Inglewood.
• For rent: pony-grazing paddock near Kintbury. Call 07974 661 440.
• For rent: ad hoc workspace, Hungerford. £20/day Hungerford Printing Company
• For sale: Eden Retirement Livings Pearl House in Newbury offers spacious apartments and penthouses with 24/7 concierge, restaurant, club lounge and parking.
• For rent: one-person office, Hungerford. Flexible terms. lauren@broadmead-estates.co.uk or call 01488 686004.
• Landlords wanted, particularly with two/three-bed houses to rent.

This week's jobs

This week's jobs include: foreman/site manager, full-time marquee rigger, returns administrator, hairdresser, barber, school cover supervisor, nursery school cook, part-time store assistant, house assistant/handy person, workshop-based mechanics, bar and wait staff, chefs, kitchen porters, housekeepers, drivers, lifeguards, warehouse operatives, forklift operators, unit managers, cleaners, LGV drivers, personal care assistants, heavy-recovery operator, service manager, carers, recreation assistants, facilities manager, nurses and laundry assistants.

Volunteering is good for the CV (and the soul) See local volunteer positions avaialble.

This Week with Penny

• This week the blackbirds have devoured the berries off our cotoneaster, stripped it bare in days. Other people are reporting flocks of redwings and fieldfare who always make a bee-line for berries when it's cold.

• Thanks to Nicola Chester for the reminder in her NWN nature column this week about cleaning our bird tables and feeders as greenfinches are very susecptible to trichomonosis or "fat finch” disease (which is heartbreaking as they starve to death).

• Slow progress with alfalfa sprouting this week. Yes I know, it would help if our kitchen were a bit warmer...

• I've rediscovered on YouTube Dr John Campbell, the down-to-earth Cumbrian medic who's a big proponent of Vitamin D in boosting immune systems and fighting covid and other "diseases of civilsation" like including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, autoimmune disease and cancer. Campbell believes in the vaccines but also gives a voice to people who have had negative reactions to them.

• Enter our 2021-22 Xmas & New Year Quiz to win a prize from The Ibex in Chaddleworth.

• For weeks now, I have felt a low level stress about Christmas – what presents to get whom, what we're going to cook, will the shops have what I need if I leave it too late, what social events to organise or go to...most years we wing Christmas and it seems to work out alright but the stress is still there to live up to expectations. Perhaps it's because we'll have sons coming back from uni for the first time. Here is a reminder of why Christmas can be stressful and some tips to cope from local therapist Siobhan Nell.

• Speaking of buying things and of Christmas, if you're looking for a stocking filler (and who isn't?), copies of our collection of some of Brian's stories and parodies, Unaccustomed as I Am, are still available from Madhatter Books, The White Horse Bookshop and the Hungerford Bookshop.

Sun 12 Dec

Sun 12 Dec

Fri 17 Dec

Sat 18 Dec

Dates for the Diary

Penny & Brian
penny@pennypost.org.uk