Chess Club and Games Meet-Up launches this month at The Nag’s Head

A NEW Chess Club & Games Meet-Up will be starting on Monday 27th March at 3.30pm and it‘s FREE!

A chance to meet other Glenfield residents in a social, friendly local venue (The Nag‘s Head, Station Road) to play Chess, as well as Dominoes, and Card Games. Everyone is welcome, you don‘t have to be an expert, just come along and have fun. Drinks and snacks can be bought at the Bar.

7 Stadon Road, Anstey, Leicester LE7 7AY Tel: 0116 235 9898

For any details either call Carlym (evenings) on: 0116 287 8886 or email: carlymquantrill@hotmail.co.uk or call Donna on: 0116 287 2794.

Email: info@zarianstey.co.uk

Web: www.zarianstey.co.uk

Or just turn up at our first meet-up on Monday 27th March Monday at 3.30pm. See you there, (please bring along a Chess Set, Dominoes, or Cards if you have them), and don‘t forget it‘s FREE! We will then meet regularly every Monday.

(If you are between 14 & 17 years old and would like to join the Chess & Games Club, please contact Carlym or Donna, you are welcome, but obviously you can‘t drink alcohol.)

REQUEST TO GAZETTE READERS: If you have a chess set, dominoes, or packs of playing Cards lying around that you don‘t use, we would be most grateful for any donations. If you could drop them off at The Nag‘s Head we would really appreciate your generosity.

Clare Balding is broadcasting royalty – and her own royal connections are pretty impressive too…

To millions of TV viewers, Clare Balding is the charismatic presenter of Crufts, which returns to the NEC Birmingham this month (9th-12th March). Clare has hosted the show since 2004 (for both the BBC and now Channel 4). So, does she have a favourite moment throughout her time presenting Crufts? “Having puppies with me on the sofa is always a joy, as you never know what’s going to happen. If I can have a dog on my lap or at my feet for every link, I’m happy.”

Clare, 52, who lives in West London with her radio presenter wife Alice Arnold, was the recipient of an unexpected CBE in the late Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2022. Already with an OBE in 2013 for her services to broadcasting and journalism, Clare was given the title in acknowledgment of her services to sport and charity.

Sport has always played an important part in Clare’s life. Not only has the BAFTA-winning presenter, who joined the BBC as a trainee in 1994, led the coverage of sporting events including the Olympics and Paralympics, the Grand National, Wimbledon, Royal Ascot and the Commonwealth Games to name but a few, Clare became a champion amateur jockey in her early twenties and dreamt of winning the Grand National, or riding at the Olympics.

Clare has two other great passions in life –animals (especially dogs and horses) and writing. Her childhood was unconventional. Home for Clare and her brother Andrew was Park House Stables, 1,500 acres of land adjoining Watership Down. Her father, Ian Balding, was the Queen’s racehorse trainer. Rather inevitably, Clare took easily to horses, learning to ride almost as soon as she could walk. Her first mount, Valkyrie, a sweet-natured Shetland pony, was given to her parents by the Queen shortly after Clare was born. Valkyrie had taught Princes Andrew and Edward to ride.

Her long association with the royal family is through her grandfather, Peter Hastings-Bass, father Ian and uncle, the seventeenth Earl of Huntingdon, with all serving as trainers for the Queen’s horses.

Reflecting on their connections back in 2017, Clare said: “My dad trained for the Queen so growing up, she would come and see the horses…about once a year and sometimes he’d forget to tell us that the Queen was coming.”

“So, you’d have that situation where you came back to the house, the Queen was there for breakfast, that was really odd.”

“She loved coming to the stables because it was the one place that didn’t smell of fresh paint, it smelt of horses.”

Clare is also a best-selling and award-winning author of numerous books and children’s novels. Her first book, My Animals and Other Family was published by Penguin in 2012. Her second book, Walking Home, was published in 2014, while her first children’s book, The Racehorse Who Wouldn’t Gallop, a witty book with a horse-mad heroine, followed in 2016. To date Clare has a further five books to her credit.

LOROS LADIES’ SINGERS fundraising raises £30.000 for the hospice

WE ARE A small lady’s choir which has been in existence since 2005 We originally consisted of staff, volunteers, and friends. Staff started to leave or retire, and now it consists of former staff, volunteers and friends’ staff and volunteers. We liaise with LOROS fundraisers and have raised over thirty thousand pounds since 2005

We have sung at over 140 events singing for LOROS on many occasions, including on the ward, in Day Therapy, at volunteers’ parties, the 25th anniversary picnic, LOROS shop opening.

- We have sung at many concerts and fundraising events, also weddings and funerals and in various settings including churches, halls, care homes, hospital ward, pubs, gardens, parties, shops

- Our singing services have been a prize at fundraising auctions We have made a CD to help raise funds

We have sung on BBC Radio Leicester We have sung at De Montfort Hall

Until the pandemic we rehearsed weekly at LOROS, where patients and families would sometimes come to listen. Now due to LOROS covid restrictions we have moved and rehearse most Wednesdays at 5.0pm at St Anne’s Church Hall, Western Park.

Twice the fun as Groby Players present two one-act comedies

OUR NEXT PRODUCTION on March 23rd/24/25th, in the Village Hall, Groby, consists of TWO one-act, comedy plays.

The first is about a group of women, waiting for a bus, who indulge in gossip to pass the time, revealing their differing views on life.

The second is about the ‘The Little Grimley Amateur Dramatic Society’ who are in trouble, and need to sell tickets fast, and the only thing that will sell tickets, argues Gordon, the Chairman, is ‘Sex’!!

It’s café style seating , so bring your own refreshments for the interval, and enjoy an evening of local entertainment. Doors open at 7pm. Curtain up at 7.30pm.

Tickets, priced at £8, are available from grobyplayers@yahoo.com, or tel/text 07790 861033, or message on our Facebook page.

If you would be interested in joining our choir, you would be most welcome We sing a variety of different music or if you are thinking of doing a fund raising event for LOROS and would be interested in booking our choir please contact Judy Dodd (music director 0116 285 6217)

Our next fundraising concert is on Saturday April 15th at 3pm at St Annes Church Hall Letchworth Road LE3 6FN