While most of us have spent some of lockdown clearing out wardrobes and clothing cupboards, Eloise Grant from Cranborne has established a brilliant way to make the best use of our unwanted garments.
With a degree in Human Geography and Environmental Science and an MSc in Strategic Sustainable Business, this visionary 23 year-old has set up a volunteer-led, social enterprise called Wardrobe Foundation.
Eloise’s team includes her parents. Her mum, Lisa, is a self-confessed organiser with a passion for fashion and her dad, Stuart, has many years of experience in the fashion industry. She also has many very creatively-talented volunteers.
Wardrobe Foundation, which operates out of two converted barn units in Cranborne, repurposes donated clothing to women in need of clothing support. It collates donations of items you would typically find in a woman’s wardrobe, such as jeans, hoodies, jumpers, skirts, trousers and coats. Wardrobe Foundation then creates a capsule wardrobe of foundation pieces presented in bespoke gift bags.
Gift Bag
Eloise explains: “Our objective is simple – to work closely with women’s charities and local communities to support women who need clothing. There are many women in the UK who are in desperate need of clothing and many women who have a wardrobe full of clothes they no longer need; clothes they do not wear, no longer fit or have fallen out of love with. We believe we can bridge the gap by supporting women as well as promoting sustainability.’’
Wardrobe Foundation launched in September 2020 and Eloise reports it has seen a huge increase from women needing its support: “We have provided clothing gift bags to more than 75 women so far – providing over 1,000 items of clothing and delivering across eight partner charities across Dorset and BCP.
“We’ve certainly experienced an uplift in urgent and short notice requests for clothing parcels throughout January, especially with the impact of this winter lockdown now kicking in. We’re also aware how busy food banks have become during the pandemic so we’re now partnering with food banks across the region to identify women needing clothing.”
Recycled clothes
The donations have been phenomenal, with Wardrobe Foundation receiving 1300kg of clothing so far. Eloise told the digital Blackmore Vale “We’re delighted with the amount and the quality of clothing donations we’ve received. We need these donations to keep coming so we can satisfy demand for clothing gift parcels – especially as the seasons change and we see again the significant effects of this pandemic on women.”
And if you haven’t got around to decluttering your clothes yet, Eloise advises: “This latest lockdown is an ideal time for people to detox their wardrobes and prepare their donations. When you consider the average garment is worn just 10 times and the UK is annually responsible for 300,000 tonnes of clothing going into landfill, recycling good quality clothes for the benefit of others is a win-win.”
“Every day we’re inspired by the wonderful women that we support and the brilliant charities who continue to work throughout this pandemic. While 2021 has already brought challenges, we’re excited to develop Wardrobe Foundation and continue to provide clothing support.”
What can I donate to wardrobe foundation
Visit the website www.wardrobefoundation.co.uk or follow their social media www.facebook.com/wardrobefoundation/ and Twitter feeds @WardrobeFounda1 to see how to donate. They regularly arrange doorstep collection dates. Of course, all is in keeping with government guidelines and social distancing.
Thousands of residents, schools and businesses are being given a helping hand with their internet bills during the national lockdown.
Wessex Internet, the Blandford-based internet provider, is doubling the data availability for its existing customers on limited data tariffs during January and February free of charge.
Hector Gibson Fleming – Wessex Internet
Hector Gibson Fleming, Managing Director, said: “This is a tough time of year for everybody.
“Due to the increasing number of people working from home, children who are home schooling, people who are shielding and businesses that are operating under difficult conditions it is anticipated that more data will be used during this period.
“We want to take the pressure off and give something back to our valued customers.”
Wessex Internet provided the same offer during last year’s national lockdown.
It is contacting existing customers who are on limited data tariffs individually to inform them of the good news.
Wessex Internet is an independent ISP (internet service provider) that uses its proprietary fibre network to deliver ultrafast broadband to Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset and beyond.
The company delivers ultrafast internet to thousands of customers whose copper to fibre upgrade was deemed uncommercial by the rest of the telecoms industry.
The network consists of more than 150 wireless masts and over 1,500km (932 miles) of fibre delivering ultrafast fibre and wireless coverage to more than 3,500 customers across Dorset, South Wiltshire, South Somerset and parts of Hampshire.
COVID19 and the lockdowns have left many people feeling adrift in their relationships and have sadly led to an increase of incidents of domestic violence. The good news is that we are still able to help you with any and all family matters during this time and have dedicated practitioners working within the team.
You may wish to undertake mediation in the first instance to see if matters can be agreed between you and your spouse or partner. Mediators are still working and this can be done remotely via Zoom. Thanks to the technology we now have, the same benefits of mediation such as separate rooms, individual or joint mediation, or family mediation can be accessed without putting yourself at risk. There
are some circumstances in which mediation is not suitable; however, attending mediation can help keep the relationship more amicable. A less contentious divorce or separation can be much easier in situations where there are children, for example. Mediation is a voluntary process and neither party can be forced to attend. However, mediation is usually a mandatory step before any Court proceedings can be issued. We can advise you fully in respect of mediation and its appropriateness.
If mediation is not suitable, or fails, we are now taking instruction mainly via telephone or remotely for example via Zoom. We can arrange a telephone call or virtual meeting whenever is convenient for you and give you the necessary advice.
All documents and bundles for filing with the Court are now often being filed electronically. This prevents multiple people handling documents. We may therefore be sending you more emails with documents to be electronically approved. We will take your email address at the outset to ensure we can send everything we need to you promptly and safely.
The main difference to how proceedings are now managed is the use of remote Court hearings. The Court is providing both telephone and video link hearings. Usually you would have to attend court in person alongside your solicitor and the other parties. However, during the pandemic, Courts are now using the BT MeetMe telephone conference service, Microsoft Teams, Skype and other video conferencing software. These new methods of conducting Hearings are easy to use and do not require additional software aside from a smart phone for video conferences or any phone number for BT MeetMe. At the outset of the Court Hearing you will be reminded that recording the Hearing is a criminal offence and that it is essential you are alone in a private location for the duration of the call. Once this formality has been covered, the process is the same as in pre-COVID times, and your solicitor can represent you.
There is currently a backlog in Court cases due to the increased demand and staff absence. However, Courts are still running and dealing with as much as they can manage but there are delays in getting Court Hearings and paperwork being dealt with by the Court. Whilst this may mean any proceedings take a little longer than usual, we are still able to offer the full range of assistance and services as we could at any other time.
If you need any assistance in relation to any family matter please be confident that our team can assist you fully – the processes may be slightly different in these difficult times – however we can still progress matters on your behalf. Contact Hollie Knapman on 01935 846255 or [email protected]
Tributes have been pouring onto social media following the death on January 6 of Blackmore Vale motocross legend Bryan ‘Badger’ Goss. He was 80.
Bryan was born at Yetminster on September 11, 1940 – during the Battle of Britain, hence his middle name, Winston, after wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
By all accounts Bob was a simple fellow, known unkindly to the locals as the Village Idiot.
But a story I learned some years ago tells me he was not that much of an idiot after all.
Bob was standing outside Iwerne Minster village school one day when a car pulled up.
This was in the early 1930s, where there weren’t too many cars around.
The driver of this one wound down his window and asked for directions to Pimperne.
The former Co-operative Stores’ timber-framed design is typical of the Ismay era
Bob did his best to describe the route but after this third faltering attempt, the motorist’s irritation began to show.
‘My God, boy, you don’t know much, do you?’ he barked.
‘No, sir. But I baint’ lost,’ young Bob replied – a retort that ensured his place in village folklore.
I heard the tale back in 2010, when natives Jim Beck and Tom Crabbe took me on an historical tour of Iwerne Minster, which I reported in one of my regular columns in the original Blackmore Vale Magazine.
The school later became Clayemore School’s art and design department.
At the top of nearby Shute Lane, Jim and Tom showed me one of three surviving village pumps. I say ‘surviving’ because at one time there were four.
At this pump in the early 20th century, Iwerne’s last ‘Lord of the Manor’, James Ismay, used to display the daily papers for villagers to read.
‘Many people couldn’t afford newspapers but they could read the news at the pump,’ Jim told me.
Later the papers were displayed in a purpose-built shelter close by, which in its day was called the War Office (it opened during the First World War).
It is now known as the News Office and serves as the village notice-board.
The News Office, formerly known as the War Office
It looks rather like a bus shelter but I suspect you’d be waiting a long time for a bus in this village street.
A carving on the gable of Hermes, the Winged messenger, hints at the shelter’s original purpose.
James Ismay bought Iwerne Minster in 1908 and created a ‘model village’ atmosphere with hand-painted shop signs, various agricultural experiments and specially designed uniforms for the children.
He was a stickler for uniformity.
All the houses at roller-blinds supplied by the estate and villagers were not allowed to strip ivy off their walls.
The village boys wore blue jumpers with a red band while the girls had Little Red Riding Hood cloaks.
The previous squire, the second Lord Wolverton, also rang the changes, embarking on a building programme typified by the red brick half-timbered houses that are characteristic of Iwerne today.
Dating from the same era is Clayesmore School, designed for Lord Wolverton in 1878 by Alfred Waterhouse and described by leading architectural commentators Newman and Pevsner as ‘the most ambitious high Victorian mansion’ in Dorset.
Iwerne’s transformation was still going on when Sir Frederick Treves was writing his topographical classic Highways and Byways of Dorset in the early 1900s.
He was not overly impressed, but then it took a lot to impress the royal surgeon, who was never short of an opinion.
‘It [Iwerne] must at one time have been very picturesque, but it is in the process of being metamorphosed into red brick,’ wrote Sir Fred.
‘The low thatched cottages are gradually vanishing, to be replaced by bold houses of gaudy brick and tiles.’
In Treves’ view, just about the only thing going for these houses was that they were ‘hygienic’ – unlike the old cottages, which tended to be damp, poorly ventilated, with little natural light and limited sanitation.
‘The red brick house can claim to be “hygienic”, but by some ill fortune most things that are hygienic – whether they be clothing, food or buildings – are unpleasant and unsightly,’ Treves asserted.
‘Even the hygienic person, with his fusty undergarments, his dismal diet and his axioms about drains and traps, is not attractive.
Jim Beck (left) and Tom Crabbe pictured at the pump at the top of Shute Lane in 2010
‘It is unreasonable to require that the inhabitants of villages should occupy unwholesome dwellings merely to please the aesthetic tastes of the passer-by.
‘The exquisite old thatched cottage, with its tiny windows of diamond panes, must go, for the man of drains has spoken, and with it will vanish the most characteristic feature of rural England.’
Before the man of drains was the man of slops, but I doubt that Treves ever met Gulliver Wareham.
He was Iwerne’s very own toilet man but Mr Hygienic he was not.
Every Friday and Saturday, Wareham toured the village emptying slop pails into his pail cart.
Once a day he would wipe his hands down his shirt before eating his lunch.
Ibberton Church is one of three in England that are dedicated to St Eustace, the others being at Tavistock in Devon and Hoo in Suffolk.
That number was in danger of being reduced to two as the Ibberton building teetered on the brink of collapse.
My ‘old’ picture shows the church almost roofless and with its walls shored up by timber props.
Many sources – including my own book A Blackmore Vale Camera – date the picture to 1889.
Ibberton Church 1892
But an unpublished diary that came to light about 12 years ago suggests the collapse occurred three or four years later.
In her entry for December 8, 1892, diarist Julietta Forrester records a visit from a distressed Rector of Ibberton with Belchalwell, the Rev Augustus Rix.
‘He was in great trouble – the roof of the chancel and chapel at Ibberton had fallen in and the nave [is] expected to follow,’ writes Julietta, wife of James Forrester, Lord Portman’s agent for the Bryanston Estate.
Six days later she paid a return visit.
‘I called first at Belchalwell Church, where the chancel roof was off and men were busy restoring that end of the church,’ she says.
‘At Ibberton I noticed the roofless chancel and side chapel of that church. The walls were very much out of perpendicular and the ceiling of the nave full of ominous-looking cracks.’
Ibberton Church 2010
Restoration work at Ibberton did not start until 1902 and took seven years to complete at a cost of £1,500. The church reopened in 1909.
In the meantime services were held in a specially built corrugated iron building that later became the village hall.
Standing well above the foothills of Bulbarrow, Ibberton Church today offers a view that few Dorset churches can match.
Stalbridge back in the 60s and 70s was a bustling village. Roughly half the size it is now, the main street was full of shops and we had some great characters. Probably top of the list was Reverend Frederick Saunders (shortened to ‘Derek’) – an eccentric, likeable, scatter-brain of a vicar resembling Alistair Sim, who’s enduring legacy of forgetfulness and haplessness still keeps village elders entertained.
Typically, once a month he trooped us primary school kids, delighted with the diversion from lessons, up to the church, only to find he’d again forgotten the enormous brass key – so we kids would again amuse ourselves among the gravestones while he dashed down to the enormous Rectory just behind the wall by the Stalbridge market cross (officially ‘the finest market cross in Dorset,’ says Hilary Townsend, author and broadcaster), now The Old Rectory Care Home.
Rev Frederick Saunders – Image courtesy of Stalbridge Archive Society
And come the time for his sermon, he’d start to look a bit panicky and search his pockets, a benign smile in place, until it dawned on him that his notes were, again, back at the Rectory, so he’d extemporise in an entertaining way, pretending to refresh his memory by looking at non-existent notes on the lecturn. We all knew he’d forgotten them. He always did.
The Rectory is where I first tasted ginger wine. I was nine and it was at Christmas carols, held in a cavernous room that was definitely a few degrees centigrade below the freezing outside air. The ‘heating’ came from a minute paraffin stove that absolutely stank.
Rev Saunders drove around in a battered old slide-door dormobile the colour of butterscotch Angel Delight. It was battered and scraped because he was forever driving or reversing into buildings, telegraph posts, walls and the few parked cars there were in a Britain barely out of post-war austerity – rationing didn’t end when we finally clobbered Johnny Hun – it continued for another nine years, ending at midnight 1954. Some youngsters moan about ‘austerity Britain’ after the financial crisis of 2008 – should have been around for the real austerity and what followed.
London’s Imperial War Museum, at the very top floor, has a wonderful, nostalgic replica of a 1940s home – stark, barely furnished. I was overwhelmed by it. That was the house I grew up in.
The Rev Saunders caused much mirth when, on a typical occasion, he drove into the petrol station (still there, and brilliantly run by very friendly staff), went and paid for five quids worth of petrol, then drove away without putting any gas in the tank, then phoned the garage for assistance ten minutes later when his car spluttered to a halt for want of fuel.
On a later occasion, which thrilled the village, he survived accidentally driving off the road up at Thornhill but he was impressed at how his car was efficiently towed out of the field, through a hedge and showed the greatest cooperation with the local policeman, PC Spencer Meacham, who’s son, also Spencer, was a mate of mine. Yes, we had a village constable who lived opposite The Green in an official ‘police house’ with official police light and notice board. How very Dixon of Dock Green.
Another character was the head of St Mary’s school Geoff Mallet, who lived in Snowdon House in Gold Street, probably one of the loveliest and architecturally distinguished streets in all Dorset. Worth a slow, appreciative walk up and down.
We school kids liked our headmaster. I had the added advantage of seeing Geoff in a social context as my mother, Audrey Palmer, was an infant teacher at the school and she and my father were friends with Geoff and his rather brisk PE teacher wife, Molly.
I had a particular reason in being friendly with Mr Mallett. I found his daughters Catherine and Celia very agreeable. I’m not sure this was reciprocated. But then I was 12 years old and girls were a mystery to me.
My father, Jack, worked at what then was Plessey in Templecombe. He and his team designed the world’s first Sonarbuoy – a device for detecting Soviet submarines while they were lurking underwater off Britain’s shores ready for Armageddon. These were dangerous times and the Cold War was far from cold – the world was at the brink of nuclear war in 1962 when the US detected Soviet missiles being assembled just off the southern US coast in Cuba. Everyday, while the superpowers had their stand-off, and Khrushchev probably banged his shoe at the UN high table, again, a nuclear strike was widely expected and the phrase on everyone’s lips was ‘the four-minute warning’ – all the notice we’d have before extinction. I do wonder if this is scheduled in when people look dreamily back to the ‘good old days’.
During this time, in the States, a public information campaign told citizens what to do when the strike came. Its slogan was ‘Duck and Cover’ and this came with a catchy little jingle showing seemingly delighted and wholesome Americans easily avoiding nuclear annihilation by …sitting under the dining table. Yep, that would probably do it!
Dad’s job sounded fun. Technically challenging, he’d often go up to Scotland’s west coast, where an RAF Nimrod would drop the sonarbuoys to see if they would detect a Royal Navy submarine that’s ‘gone deep’. He and the other boffins would freeze to death on a bucketing Naval corvette wondering how long it would be before he could go back to the hotel for a hot bath and glass of something strong and peaty.
There was a lot of interest from senior US military and we often had American naval and army air force officers coming over for dinner at our house at 1 Barrow Hill in Stalbridge – which is now two residences. Looking back, I can see how shocked they were at how frugally the British lived. Their houses stateside were crammed with possessions, colour TVs (unthinkable luxury), stereo hi-fi (I didn’t even know what those were), wonderful furniture, central heating (‘what’s wrong with a coal fire’, I thought) and swimming pools (‘you’re having a laugh, now’)– a level of consumerism decades ahead of us. We didn’t even have a phone at the time or central heating. Dad would spend some time in the US and returned with shopping catalogues and goods that would have us wide-eyed with amazement. He was offered a job in the States, ‘take it, dad,’ I’d cry, hoping I’d eventually find out what a ‘stereo hi-fi’ was,’ and was looking forward to the ‘swimming pool’, but mum liked Stalbridge, so we stayed.
My parents were not impressed when a senior US officer stubbed his cigarette out on his dining plate, after mum, having spent a day teaching, fed her five kids and quickly drummed up a meal for a sudden guest. When I lived in the South East of England, an acquaintance of mine – a banker – had a wife, who didn’t work – and two kids. And a nanny. And an au-pair. And a cleaner. She found the children ‘exhausting’. I am still amused by that.
On American manners: years later when I worked in the States I was sitting in a family home and asked if I could go to the ‘refrigerator’ to get another beer. The family shared stares of disbelief at this level of politeness.
Geoff Mallett was a man of enthusiasms. He suddenly felt that the senior kids at the primary school should learn basic French. It was obvious that no teachers knew the language, so Geoff was horrified (I later found out) that he had to do it himself. That wasn’t the PLAN. He’d stare incomprehensibly at a text book in his desk drawer, which he clearly believed was unseen by us pupils, as he hammed his inaccurate way barely one-step ahead of his charges.
He also had a sudden passion for teaching Algebra. One of my mates, clearly ahead of Billy Connolly, said, ‘why should we learn algebra, Sir, I’m never going to go there.’ My mate was serious. He thought the French was enough.
There was one teacher I really liked, Mr Head. He was considerate, enthusiastic and obsessed with fishing and hunting. He was brought up by his grandfather who worked on the Sherborne Castle estate and gave him a love of the outdoor life.
Years later, when I bought a cottage in Dorset I found that John Head, long-retired, had been head teacher at Bishops Caundle school, so I went to see the head teacher who put us in touch. We arranged to meet at the White Hart close to the school. I was so excited. So, 42 years after I last saw the teacher I really respected, in walked John Head and his lovely wife Sally. I’d have recognized him. I couldn’t not call him ‘Sir’, despite him entreating me to call him John. I just had to call him ‘Sir’ or ‘Mr Head’. That’s how I thought of him for nearly half a century.
However, both John and Sally looked rather subdued.
A few months later Sally mailed me that John had died. Just before coming to meet us, and I mean their previous appointment, they had learnt that John had terminal cancer. What courage and kindness they had in still coming along and listening and smiling patiently to me reminiscing.
After the primary school, we older kids queued for the bus which took us to Sturminster Newton High School – a good, strict school with excellent academic standards. A few years later I went to Weymouth Grammar School which was astonishingly lax by comparison.
At Stur HS, we had to call female teachers ‘ma’am’ which felt grown-up and rather American, and I wasn’t the only one that I liked it. The maths teacher, a Scot, Mrs Warren, we knew as ‘Haggis’, was very strict and an excellent teacher, showing us how to do quadrilateral equations, which amazed my new teacher at the Grammar school. I was a year ahead of other 13 year-olds at the Grammar, I believe.
The French teacher Mrs Minnear was the mother of Kerry Minnear, then a relatively famous progressive rock musician in the band Gentle Giant. Knowing of some kids’ interest in the genre she generously invited a group to her home when Kerry was visiting. He was very kind and awed kids with stories of how albums (as they were then called) were made. He was pushed to open up about other aspects of a rock star’s life, but with his mum looking on pretended not to know what was being asked.
The geography teacher, Mr Newton, I believe he had had a particularly ghastly time as a prisoner of war, I’ve an inkling in Burma or Thailand, chain-smoked cigarettes during lessons. Oh, that dreamy past.
Our form teacher had been a rear-gunner in a Lancaster – he was lucky to survive. Roughly 55,000 young men in Bomber Command died, and the rear gunners were usually the first to go.
All in all, both my first schools were happy places for kids.
One rainy November evening in the late 60s, two young scamps from the primary school, knowing that a meeting was being held in Stalbridge church, crept through the gloomy damp entrance, and in true French resistance style, threw fireworks in before scampering away in a state of great rebellious excitement. One of them was Brian Trevis, who’s dad farmed down Station Road – the farm’s now a housing estate. I can’t tell you who the other imp was, but I caught a dreadful cold that night. Bloody good fun, though.
Box this
Rationing in WWII
The first job I had after university (after a summer in the Pocono mountains, Pennsylvania, teaching teenage girls to windsurf) was to head the education department in a Sussex military museum, Fort Newhaven, similar to the Nothe Fort in Weymouth.
I knew that boys would enthuse over the guns and tanks etc, but wanted females to be interested too. So, apart from getting a display of women’s fashions from 1914 to 1945, and female military uniforms (the girls particularly admired the WREN officers uniform, and do you know what, so did I) I got the art department to mock-up a typical adults’ weekly ration – which included a 57 gram blob of butter, four thin slices of ham and bacon, 227g of gristly minced beef, 57g of tea, 57g of cheese and, wait for it, one egg.
Get out the kitchen scales and see how many feasts you’d get from 57g of cheese!
The school children I took round this fascinating display could not believe what their grandparents had to put up with. And they’d return with parents and their parents, all paying the hefty entrance fee. What a marketing genius I could have been!
By the one and only Andrew Palmer BA (Hons) accredited windsurf instructor with the Royal Yachting Association (this is true) and the best guitar teacher in Mappowder (this probably is true) – who’s just done the Times cryptic in three minutes (definitely a big fat lie) and who yesterday made perfect Yorkshire puddings, although he did burn his poor wee arm getting them out of the oven. He also par-boiled thinly cut parsnips, drained them, coated them with honey, fresh thyme and a little salt and roasted them next to the beef (Rawlston’s farm) and whose wife said ‘they is the tops, blud. Respect’.
January usually sees conveyancers taking stock – with spring in prospect, new instructions start to trickle in after the hectic pre-Christmas period. But – like the world generally – this year is different.
I know I am returning to an already busy caseload which will stay that way until at least March. The south west property market was one of the most active in England & Wales throughout 2020, stimulated by the stamp duty holiday and by people rethinking lifestyles and living arrangements due to Covid and lockdowns. Agents, surveyors, local authorities, conveyancers, lenders and removal companies remain under huge pressure to get transactions completed in challenging and extraordinary circumstances.
With this in mind, here is my New Year’s conveyancer’s wish list:
An early indication from the Chancellor – ideally, before his 3 March budget – as to whether he will stick to the current ‘drop dead’ end date for the stamp duty holiday of 31 March 2021 or will extend or phase it out. We need clarity and certainty, as soon as possible.
A crystal ball to predict with certainty when transactions will conclude. They have many moving parts and everyone must do their bit: conveyancers for both parties; surveyors; lenders, local authorities and even clients themselves.
A magic wand. With one wave, lenders will answer phones instantly, local and other search results will pop into my inbox and the other party’s conveyancer will respond promptly without being chased.
Without the above, here are some ways that clients can help themselves:
Be prepared. If you are selling, find paperwork from when you bought even before you market your property. Ask your conveyancer ahead of accepting an offer to prepare the contract pack. If you are buying, fill in engagement paperwork, provide ID, proof of address and money on account swiftly. Our regulators require this before we can start acting: valuable time is often lost while clients delay. Ensure you apply for mortgage funds at the first opportunity.
Be patient. Conveyancers generally deal with over 50 or 60 matters concurrently, often more. Constant telephone interruptions for updates cause delays for all our clients so email is best. Your conveyancer will progress your matter and keep you informed of key milestones.
Be realistic. Pre- 2020, the predicted timescale for a property transaction was around 8 – 12 weeks, more with long chains. Home working for many lenders’ staff and local authority staff continues, with surveyors and agents operating under greater restrictions. Clients themselves are at risk of having to isolate or being furloughed. Timescales are accordingly less predictable and harder to achieve.
If everyone plays their part and communication is good, we can achieve the best outcome for you at the earliest opportunity. Moving has always been a stressful business but never more so than now!
Not only does the Campaign to Protect Rural England concern itself about countryside and the communities who live there but is also involved in helping to preserve the quality of the night sky over Dorset and other parts of our country
With the current lockdown, people are largely confined to their own home and will no doubt be spending rather too much time gazing at their TV, computer or smartphone. An alternative, if the skies happen to be clear one evening, is to wrap up warm, step outside into the garden and have a good look at what can be seen in the sky. Now that the Christmas lights are safely stowed away for another year, you should have a good opportunity to observe a dark night sky, weather permitting. A pair of binoculars or small telescope and guidebook will help you identify anything of a celestial nature.
Every night there is usually a planet visible, recognisable in being bright and not twinkling like a star. Since planets wander across the sky, they sometimes appear close together as happened with the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn that took place in mid-December. Good views were to be had from Stourton Caundle and other parts of the Blackmore Vale on Sunday 20th shortly before the planets reached their closest on the 21st. Earlier, the crescent moon also shared the spectacle in a triple conjunction as shown in the image below taken by Michael Mattiazzo, an astronomer friend.
Other times when the moon is absent, a myriad of stars can be seen and what you might easily mistake for a cloud is in fact the faint glow of the Milky Way, our galaxy of stars seen edge-on stretching across the sky. Do wear sensible clothes and boots to stay warm, find a convenient easy chair. Remain outside for at least 10-15 minutes so your eyes become properly ‘dark adapted’. I can guarantee that you will also witness the occasional ‘star’ moving silently across the blackness: one of many ‘man-made’ satellites launched into space and orbiting the earth. You might also catch a view of a shooting star or meteor.
So let’s all be mindful of the natural spectacle visible from our doorstep every clear night. And if you have to have a security light, make sure it’s of the motion-sensitive variety that switches the light on only when necessary. To preserve our view of the heavens will require future housing developments to have ‘full-cut-off’ street lighting so no light is directed into the sky. A curfew time may also be adopted after which streetlights are automatically switched off to save energy and to avoid light pollution thereby protecting the natural environment.
