T he Common Touch...

WHISTLEWOOD will be starting up the community garden volunteering on Tuesday mornings this spring, so keep an eye out on our Facebook page to see when it starts. You might want to learn about growing edibles.

You might not have your own garden space, or have had an allotment in the past but it became too much to keep up with on your own Join our green fingered crew to get outside and get growing and be part of a community who are into healthy eating and value seasonal food.

If we grow our own food or buy locally grown food we are helping to strengthen our food security. The interest in community gardening and food-growing locally is exploding as more people become concerned about the cost of living crisis, threats to trade links across the world and food insecurities brought on by climate change.

There’s a phrase which is going around at the moment and that is ‘Our food system is broken’. We’ve seen evidence of this on the super- market shelves recently I hope it is bringing it home to people that we might not be able to rely on certain foods being available all the time

We need to rethink the food choices we make when shopping. This country does not have food sovereignty; the food system is in crisis.

Large food corporations are using up about 70 per cent of the world’s land to produce about 30 per cent of the world’s food. They also produce food for animal feed and biofuels using all the world’s commercially produced fertiliser and wasting tons of water Check out Pat Mooney and his ETC group who monitor the impacts of, among other things, agriculture around the world

We need to educate ourselves about what these multi-nationals are doing and keep monitoring and questioning their data on food production. Most of the food they produce is then highly processed and contains too much salt, sugar and fat. Not to mention the cost to the earth and environment of the industrial agricul- certain future together, said: “For the children, the packs are intended to be a diversion They’ve got something to cuddle, something to read and something to make

“In cases where there are extremely poorly children, a child may be on a clinic at one hospital, potentially just visiting as an outpatient, but find themselves being transferred with a parent or carer at a moment’s notice to another hospital Or they may be on a clinic and admitted to a ward as an emergency

“The parent will have nothing with them and be totally unprepared, left with just their handbag, perhaps not even any cash with them, for 24 hours until they can remedy that ”

In 2023 me&dee is appealing to local businesses to adopt them as their charity of the year One comfort pack costs £25 and businesses are able to pledge support at very little cost per month, while achieving benefits themselves in terms of fulfilling increasingly important corporate social responsibility

For more information on how to support me&dee fulfil its important work comforting families going through sad times together, see www meanddee co uk tural processes, packaging and transportation. The cost of this ‘convenient’ food is the cost of climate collapse and massive carbon emissions.

After talking to some older people recently about gardening, they all said lots of salad items today don’t taste of anything. When they remember eating tomatoes grown by their grandparents, they said they tasted incredible.

The loss of taste in these foods shows us the vitamin content is very low; varieties are very limited and selected for shelf life and size, and then they’re picked before they’re ripe! Give up on tomatoes out of season, you’d get more vitamins from making a salsa from tinned tomatoes. Thinking about what food choices you are making in your weekly shop and trying to grow your own food collectively with others will benefit your health, both mental and physical … and your pocket! –

ASTON players took to the stage once again with a wonderful performance of Treasure Island, which brought plenty of smiles and laughter to the village’s memorial hall.

From producer Delia Gascoigne playing the part of the parrot –hobbling and complaining of aches and pains, leading to her being sadly unable to sit on the shoulder of a suitably piratical John Sibley playing Long John Silver – to a fabulous pantomime dame, Ma Hawkins, played by Paul Makinson, this was a production that bore all the traditional highlights of a good oldfashioned British panto, complete with the always-necessary audience participation in the form of a sing-along and culminating in a riotous water pistol fight

With the part of the young hero Jim Hawkins perfectly portrayed by Ingrid Gascoigne, who melted hearts alongside fiancé Jenny – as played by Ava Chetwyn – with a beautifully sung duet, the Aston Players as usual left a warm feeling in the hearts of their audience over five performances spread over three days

As with all the best panto, the freewheeling plot took in all the famous elements of Treasure Island –pirates, a map, and the prospect of