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From the Editor
CanIhaveahorse,aMrFrostyIceDrinksMakerandamassiveboxofToffifee…hangonthat wasmyletterwhenIwas8!!ThisyearSantaIwouldloveitifyoucouldmakesureeveryone enjoysoursuper-duper,mega,fullyChristmas,Christmassyedition!!!Thisyearwe’vegoneall out, we wanted to embrace a slightly different direction from our features of previous years and really just celebrate with our readers, spread the ‘Shop Local’ message and make sure thatwewaved2024offwithallthetinselandglitterwecouldfind!!
So, to make sure we make it onto your ‘good’ boys and girls list, we’re giving away some fantabulous prizes via a couple of fun competitions, and they really do need to be won!!! We really hope everyone enjoys doing them as we put in lots of work and laughs into our little Christmas Movie skit, featuring the whole team (Sarah, Liam, Myself, David, Michelle, Lisa, Jay, Flake and Roger)! So Santa, can you make sure that everyone enters, it’s in the centre pagesofthemagazineandcanyouremindthemall,“you’vegottobeinittowinit!”
On a personal note Santa, it’s fair to say that Myself, Liam and the rest of the team haven’t hadtheeasiestyearthroughout2024,foranabsolutemultitudeofreasonsanddespitethere beingsomeverydifficulttimes,we’veworkedtogetherandgotthroughbecause,asI’msure you’llagree,badtimesdon’tlast!Iknowwearen’taloneinfeelinglikethisthroughout2024, we’ve had so many of our advertisers as well who have enjoyed better times previously and thisreallyhighlightedtoustheimportanceofgivingsomethingback.Afewofourwonderful advertisers have joined in with us, of their own volition, and offered some fantastic prizes to be won as well. So, please can you remind our readers to shop local, it won’t matter to Jeff Bezos if they buy another gift from Amazon but it will really matter to their neighbour who runsthelocalmagazine/shop/plumbingservice/electricalcompanyetc.
Finally Santa, I would like to truly wish everyone and their loved ones a wonderful festive periodfromallofusatVoiceMagazines.Andwewouldliketothankthemallfortheirsupport overthepastyear.We’llbebackin2025withashinynewlooktokeepshowcasingthebest, reliablebusinessesandgreatcommunitycontent.
MerryChristmasSanta(andeveryone),
PS:Don’tforgettomentionthe‘Voice’whenyouuseanyofthecompaniesinthismagazine
THE JOY OF WRAPPING!
It’s nearly Christmas, that special time of year to show loved ones how much they mean to you—by spending hours wrestling with cheap wrapping paper that tears if you so much as look at it.
If you enjoy a little arm workout with your gift-wrapping, flimsy wrapping paper is for you. Picture it: you carefully cut a piece, wrap it around your present, only to discover it’s torn on the corner. So, you try again, re-wrap, add more tape, and just when you think you’re done—it rips again. It’s as if this paper was designed by someone who enjoys frustrating people.
And this thin paper doesn’t just rip either; it rejects tape, too. It’s as if it’s saying, “You really thought I’d stick to that?” By the time you’ve mummified your present in enough tape to make it structurally sound, you’ve likely used up any money you saved buying the cheap stuff, plus lost a few hours of wrapping time. And then, to add insult to injury, as you move it under the tree, you stick your finger straight through one of the few areas you haven’t smothered in sticky tape.
Cheap wrapping paper is a bit like that one flashy friend — you know the one—looks great from a distance, but up close, the, errrm, flaws, are revealed. It may be glittery, shiny, and gorgeous in the shop, but the moment you roll it out, the illusion shatters. You might as well be wrapping with a festive paper napkin.
Dropping the humour for a minute, many of us are trying to be a bit more eco-friendly these days, so it’s worth noting that thin wrapping paper and sustainability are not exactly best friends. While you’re trying to use minimal paper, you will end up needing more of it just to get the job done! Plus, if it has glitter or shiny coatings, it’s headed straight for the landfill, as it is not recyclable.
Cheap wrapping paper might save a few quid up front, but by the end, you’ll probably find yourself asking, “Was it worth it?” Quality paper, on the other hand, sticks to tape, doesn’t rip every five seconds, and makes wrapping easier. Not that there is any guarantee you won’t manage to poke a hole in it as you pile the presents under the Christmas tree.
Beautifully wrapped presents under the tree are the stuff of magazine photo shoots and “influencer” videos. At the end of the day, the recipients, particularly children, are far more interested in what the wrapping paper is concealing—not how aesthetically pleasing the bow and ribbon is, or how well the colour of the paper matches the room décor.
So, spend less time on prettifying those gifts. After all, the paper is only going to be ripped off and screwed into a ball (unless you are really, really, good at carefully flattening out used gift wrap!). But perhaps for your own sanity, give the flimsy wrapping paper a miss?
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Resolve Your Civil Disputes with Elliot Mather LLP: Your Trusted Legal Partner
Are you facing civil challenges? Elliot Mather LLP is here to guide you toward solutions. As your local solicitors, we specialise in achieving the best outcomes for our clients.
Our expertise covers a wide range of civil matters:
• Challenging a Will.
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Whether you’re in Nottinghamshire, Clay Cross, or North East Derbyshire, we’re ready to assist you.
Ready to Resolve Your Civil Matters? Contact Us Today! Call 0330 333 2613 or email peter.kidd@elliotmather.co.uk to see how we can help you find the best legal solutions.
Draycotts Kia (Sutt
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Merry Christmas Everyone!
We wanted to spread a bit of extra Christmas cheer this year, so we have produced this special pull out, filled with Christmas fun, including recipes, events, puzzles, competitions and some very special prizes to be won!
The sharp eyed amongst you may notice some unusual characters dotted around… these are our special Christmas cartoon characters and more will be explained over the page. These are just part of the fun we had putting this special feature together and we hope you have as much fun too!
SHOP LOCAL THIS CHRISTMAS
Although this Christmas special is advert free it doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten the importance of supporting local businesses… and neither should you.
If you make a special effort to buy some of your gifts, or stock up on Xmas supplies from local shops instead of online or from big chain stores it can do wonders for the local community. That money goes straight to local people and families, who in turn will spend a proportion of that money again in the local community and that cycle goes around again and again and again!
And as everybody who shops local already knows, local business are always the best, giving you better service and better products at better prices. So, let’s all do something good this Christmas and shop local!
Jack and the Beanstalk
Fri 6 Dec 2024 –Wed 1 Jan 2025 BUXTON OPERA HOUSE
Brought to you by the incredible team behind Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella, join Jack and a talented cast for another year of festive fun, For more information or call our Box Office team to book 01298 72190
Mercatum Artisan Christmas Market
HADDON HALL
WED 27TH NOV – SUN 1ST DEC
WED 4TH – SUN 8TH DEC
WED 11TH – SUN 15TH DEC
VISIT HADDONHALL.CO.UK FOR MORE INFO AND TO BOOK.
CHATSWORTH ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS HAMPER LTD
Competition Competition GUESS THE MOVIE GUESS THE MOVIE
We’ve created a showreel of our favourite Christmas movies, starring cartoon characters of the team here at VOICE HQ. We’ve put ourselves in iconic images from nine famous films. CAN YOU GUESS THE MOVIES?
*Down
You can play for fun or you can enter the prize draw for a chance to win one of the fabulous prizes on the Christmas Tree, including our star prize, A LUXURIOUS CHATSWORTH HOUSE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS HAMPER! Here’s a clue… Home Alone doesn’t feature twice.
To enter the prize draw, simply send your 9 movie names via email to community@ voicemagazines.co.uk with the subject line: ‘Christmas Competition’. Please provide your full name, address and telephone number, so all winners can be notified. Closing date: Friday 13th December 2024. Competition winners will need to collect their prizes from the Voice Magazines office at 81 High Street, South Normanton, Derbyshire, DE55 2BP between Monday 16th – Friday 20th December.
CHRISTMAS OREO (BAU)BALLS
Shareyour(bau)balls withus!! Wewouldlovetoseethem!
Get ready to make some super tasty Christmas Oreo cookie balls that are as fun to decorate as they are to eat! With just a few simple ingredients and loads of toppings, you’ll be whipping up a treat everyone will love!
What You’ll Need:
28 OREO COOKIES – regular ones
150G CREAM CHEESE – full-fat and soft (room temperature)
200G MELTING CHOCOLATE – white or dark chocolate.
TOPPINGS – coconut, crushed nuts, cookies, sprinkles.
Let’s Get Started!
Prepare Baking Sheets: Line a baking sheet with parchment or wax paper.
Crush Cookies: Crush Oreos into fine crumbs using a food processor (or put them in a bag and smash them with a rolling pin!).
Add Cream Cheese: Mix the softened cream cheese with the crumbs until it forms a dough-like ball.
Roll Into Balls: Scoop out 1-inch portions and roll into balls; place
on the baking sheet.
Chill the Balls: Pop the tray in the fridge for 1 hour to let them firm up.
Melt Chocolate: Melt the chocolate in the microwave or on the stove until smooth.
Dip & Decorate: Dip each ball in chocolate, then decorate with your favourite toppings, like sprinkles, crushed cookies, or you can roll them in coconuts or crushed nuts.
FIND FLAKE Win
FIND FLAKE
Where has Flakey gone? The team at Voice Mags have lost Flake amongst a pile of presents. Can you help us find him?
To enter the draw for the Afternoon Cream Tea circle where you think Flake is on the picture and send it back to us as a picture via email, to community@voicemagazines. co.uk by Thursday 19th December 2024 with the subject: Afternoon Tea Competition.
Cream Tea
Bathroom and Kitchen Warehouse
Lewis is the largest island in the Outer Hebrides. It’s a dark, beautifully rugged place, with more than its share of social problems and a culture which reflects the landscape. Tradition still rules. It is appropriately insular and secrets lie buried deep.
The Black House is the first thriller in a trilogy set on Lewis by Scots writer Peter May. Our protagonist CID detective Fin Macleod is called back to home turf which he thought he had turned his back on by a murder similar to one he was investigating on the mainland.
But this is so much more than a murder mystery. The crime unfolds through Macleod’s memories of a brutal and troubled upbringing. As he says - he feels like a ghost haunting his own past.
It’s a story of grim family secrets and betrayal and is admirably direct in its language – and you may even know a few Gaelic words by the end of it. And overlying the tale are wonderful descriptions of the atmosphere and culture which draw you in and hug you tight. A dark story for dark nights.
Heritage of Kirkby & Annesley
DECEMBER 2024
CHRISTMAS MEMORIES
As a small child in the mid 60’s my family lived close by, and it was very traditional to visit for part of Christmas day. Somethings stand out for early years, including decorations that were used every year, no matter how worn they were!
An older friend told me he was asked as a small boy “what is Santa bringing you?” being well brought up, he remembered saying “I will leave it up to Santa”. The Christmas Box was a big present, sometimes the only one, annuals of the weekly comic you had, Beano, Dandy, or girl’s comics like Twinkle, Tammy, Diana and Jackie. You may have asked for something in passing and hoped it would come with Santa down the Chimney or with the magic key at the back door. Coal fires were nice but no good for a jolly red suited man.
Pillow slips were our Santa sacks, left at the bottom of the bed, we were fast asleep when they were left. One of my first big presents was a doll’s pushchair in 1966, it was wrapped in lots of paper which I ripped frantically, throwing it all over.
The following year we had moved from Grandma’s house to a council house a few miles away. This meant a plan
of action to get two children under six and a baby ready to walk to Grandmas for Christmas Tea with the cousins. Over time this became the routine with adult’s playing cards and drinking in the living room, Children playing with presents in the front room. Funny thing, our uncle was a little older and his toys from an old sideboard were far more interesting.
Gran always made a sherry trifle in a proper big glass trifle bowl. Mince pies had been made in the Kitchen using an old rolling pin of great Gran’s, which was rumored to have been made from an off cut off a wooden coffin. Ham and tomato sandwiches were part of the evening’s food, we were all full from tea and a big Christmas dinner at home.
If we asked nicely, drinks like snowball, port and lemon and even a babycham might be shared. Although we didn’t like the beer. Around 11pm we gave up trying to stay awake and our parents knew it was time to walk home. Boxing day next, we could play with our new toys….
Perhaps you could write your Christmas memories for your grandchildren, show them the photos and cards. Things are so different now….
This is one film that I like to watch before Christmas is under way, White Christmas was a very successful film that followed, filmed on the same set and based around the song.
2011 Kirkby in Ashield view of the clock on The Nags Head Corner, a heavy fall of Snow in early December.
FIRST 4 FASCIAS
SUDOKU
All Around the Shire
THE CHRISTMAS SIDEBOARD
When I was a child visiting family homes around Christmastime, there was always a display of seasonal goodies on the sideboard.
First, there sat a Christmas cake, iced and decorated with fat robins, deer, Santas, sprigs of holly and proudly surrounded by a frilled tartan collar. Other goodies involved boxes of chocolates, jellied orange and lemon slices, Turkish delight, liqueur chocolates, Scottish shortbread and after dinner mints. There was always a bowl of nuts with a nutcracker.
These were offered around after a meal. Some rather rich and not really to a child’s taste. The not-so-popular delicacies would be the last to go.
This might also be the place where the Christmas trifle might stand, decorated with silver balls, dribbling with too much sherry, and containing a can of tinned fruit cocktail with its two halves of cherry. But the best you’ve ever tasted.
There might also stand bottles of Christmas tipples: Ginger wine (my particular favourite), Advocaat for making snowballs, a small jar of maraschino cherries for finishing off the snowball, Sherry, Port and Babycham. The best glassware would be
available, including sherry schooners and the posh cutlery would come out of its hinged box.
A box of Hamlet cigars would also grace the sideboard, an annual treat for the men.
We also were able to entertain in the front room which was only ever heated and used at this time of year.
Everything was special and memorable. Heartwarming memories made.
I WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY AND PEACEFUL CHRISTMAS
Janet and Paul Barrass are All Around the Shire. Find us on or email: oldfield512@btinternet.com for more information. Janet
Guess
the words and Fill in the crossword !
Pitcherwits®
Pitcherwits® are crossword puzzles where some of the clues are in pictures. Sound easy? It’s not called “Pit-your-wits” for nothing! The mixture of cryptic and picture clues, combined with Professor Rebus’ unique sense of humour, will keep you entertained for hours.
1 Pup, muddling its way to a Crimble treat! (4,7)
5 Non-brew recipe is for the seasonal king (7)
14 Sheared off sticks, but not stones (7)
16 Truckers can be prepared for getting colonels, say (11)
Across
9 Drink, about to be brewed for leader Douglas-Home (4)
10 Only fair? (4)
11 Bigwig looking in Inuit quarters (5)
12 Tighten a nut for a relative who’s a great one (4)
13 Practiced finally for the state of the Christmas cake (4)
Down
2 Tea store removed from the backburner (3)
3 Fell-running, ending up back in the pub? (3)
7 Direct approach, in order to wish away the wheelie bins (7)
14 Cunning way to express oneself! (3)
15 Bishop’s place in the greenhouse effect (3)
1 Buddleia, 2 Caps, 3 Ache, 4 Dress sense, 5 Going to sea, 8 Plaza, 9 Radiator, 14 Drew, 15 Held. Across
1 Christmas dinner requisite presented on an iron parapet (11)
4 Adding gilts to your equity plan is Carol’s good news (4,7)
6 Fired up by deceit that’s a little dodgy! (7)
8 Wild trajectories start off with what to do this season (7)
5 Gnu, 6 Dip, 7 Spheres, 10 Nil, 11 Encased, 12 Ire, 13 Obadiah, 16 Eat, 17 One, 18 Arc-welder.
3.9m x 225mm x 38mm
Four Winds Landscaping
GROUNDS
Decking Shelves Raised beds
DRY WOOD
Ideal for: Planters Tables Rustic furniture Man cave Fencing
Best, easiest and cheapest are winter pansies which are bred to withstand the worst of the cold and make the most of low light. Cyclamen are also shiny happy plants and have the added advantage of naturalising over the years, particularly among shrubs and trees. But make sure you buy hardy cyclamen – the smaller variety. Big super showy ones won’t survive the cold. Hellebores can flower as early at Xmas and they and winter flowering heather are great for providing pollen for bumblebees which may be buzzing around on warmer days.
Protection is also important – bubble wrap your best terracotta pots as they absorb the wet and will crack with the frost. Tender shrubs can be helped through the cold by being wrapped in old fleece and straw or sacking. Remove if we get a warm spell to stop rotting and replace when it’s colder again. If you’ve bought a fig tree be careful to bundle up any tiny buds of fruit, figs are usually advertised as hardy but the buds are tender.
Japanese maples should be pruned now if needed – any later and they will bleed and become weakened. Succulents and rockery plants have been popular in garden centres this year. Now is the time to put fresh grit round them to stop them rotting in wet soil.
JAYS AND MAGPIES IN ABUNDANCE
Autumn and winter are seasons when members of the crow family form flocks and also roam the countryside in search of easy pickings. Oak trees with abundant crops of acorns draw in jays and magpies from across the area. Jays in particular, have specially adapted claws to carry a number of acorns at once. They gather these up and take them up to a mile or perhaps more, to plant them in the ground. These food caches are hidden away for when the cold weather comes, and supplies are scarce. However, although the jays remember most of the hidden acorn sites, they do forget some. These forgotten acorns will survive to germinate and maybe grow into new oak trees. The jay is ‘nature’s forester’, and this is how oak woods and oak forests spread in the wild. You don’t need to plant trees, simply let nature and the jays plant the acorns for you! Carrion crows and magpies will also do this, but they lack the ability to carry so many acorns at once.
It seems that this autumn, the jays have been very abundant and are coming to garden feeders much more frequently than they once did. In part, this is because of our changing attitudes to these very pretty birds. A few decades ago, they were ruthlessly persecuted by gamekeepers and in urban areas, by park-keepers too. Because of this troubled existence they quickly learned to avoid contact with people whenever possible. In larger tracts of
woodland, you might hear a jay in the distance, and even catch a fleeting glimpse, but that would be all as they disappeared into dense cover. Today they are doing well, and you see them frequently flying out from woodland to plant their acorns and flying also between woods. In the garden now, they will come to feed on peanut holders, but also on fat-balls and on suet dumplings. These also prove irresistible for the magpies which are also on the up, although not everyone is keen because of their predation of nestlings and bird’s eggs. At this time of the year the magpies tend to flock up and go to communal roost sites, which is typical ‘corvid’ behaviour, the corvids being the crow family. Jackdaws, carrion crows, and rooks, often form vast winter flocks, especially during cold weather. Having gathered at a number of select ‘pre-roost’ sites, the birds then move into a favoured, usually warm and sheltered location for the night. Numbers can be up to ten thousand or more. The biggest of the crows is of course the raven, and they too may gather in decent numbers and sometimes join up with carrion crows and other smaller cousins. One of the big advantages of a large winter roost site is that the birds can learn from the behaviour of their peers, where to go for the best foraging for food. At the start of each day, if a bird has fed well the previous day, then it will probably head back out directly and confidently. So, if the other birds are unsure then they just follow!
MAGPIES
WOODLAND JAY
GARDEN JAY
OAK SEEDLING
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