April 2009 Archives

This year's Festival of Lights - the biggest event in the Beaconsfield calendar - is to be scaled down and possibly even cancelled.
The organisers have been unable to find a sponsor and Beaconsfield Town Council is contributing only a fifth of the amount it put in last year.
The event will go ahead - provided the annual grant from South Bucks District Council is not scaled down too - but it will be on a smaller scale.

Buckinghamshire County Council has responded to claims by anti incinerator campaigners that the cost of incinerating rubbish will soar.
Bucks Residents Against Incinerators (BRAINS) claimed last week that the disposal of bottom ash from incinerators is now more expensive because more of it is classed as hazardous.

Hooligans have vandalised a revamped playground paid for by the community months after its grand opening in September by Beaconsfield MP Dominic Grieve.
Vandals ripped off 16 out of 21 plaques at the Malthouse Square playground on Wednesday.

PUPILS at state schools throughout Beaconsfield are being encouraged to ask their parents to allow them to walk to school instead of taking them by car for a week next month.
Walk to School Week happens every year but this time The Beaconsfield School and Beaconsfield High School are working with the town's primary schools to make a much bigger deal of the event.

RUNNERS from Beaconsfield were among the thousands to complete the London Marathon on Sunday.

An open air performance of Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing is to take place in the garden of a large house in Beaconsfield in June.
With audience numbers restricted to 100 per show for three days, and with the Saturday evening already sold out, only those who plan ahead will be seeing this one off performance by the newly formed The Garden Players.

The head teacher of Beaconsfield High School has announced that she is stepping down in August.
Penny Castagnoli, 60, will continue to work for the school two days a week as a consultant.
Deputy head Owain Johns will become acting head, and the post of head teacher will be advertised in January 2010.

When Ranald Paterson, who spent nine years working in Zambia, discovered that a nearby church was raising money for a children's home in the very district he knew so well, he offered his expertise.

A nurse who gave up hospital life to work as a carer has talked about her job and revealed that the most essential skill is "to be the type of person who will start a conversation with strangers in the queue in Tesco."
Jan Lancaster, 51, an SRN, became a carer 13 years ago with Universal Care in Beaconsfield Old Town because it offered flexible hours and, at £7.85 per hour, the pay is about the same as nursing. But the biggest motivation was the belief that she could make a bigger difference in people's homes than she could in a hospital.

Councillors were quizzed by the public at the Annual Town Meeting at Beaconsfield Town Hall last night.
Residents asked what the council was doing about anti social behaviour, the lack of public toilets, parking problems and other matters.
The meeting was mostly calm but at one point resident Simon Woolf stormed out saying the questions asked were too trivial.