The Sentinel

Local SMatters entinel

October 2022

A The Sentinel Media Group company

Folkestone - Hythe - Newington - Sandgate

Welcome to a new look The Sentinel. After a decade it became obvious that none of the communities for which we publish the magazine live in isolation and many of the pages were duplicated. So we have combined them into this one edition which will be circulated on the 23rd of each month. Each community's section is colour coded as shown:

Folkestone

If you do not wish to receive these newsletters please email UNSUBSCRIBE to david@thesentinel org uk and district and beyond

Hythe Newington Sandgate

You can either start reading from the beginning or click on the preferred community above to go straight to that section. I hope you enjoy this new look.

Folkestone and district and beyond

New to the Family

I was able to set up The Sentinel Publishing and Magazines because technology allowed an alternative to the old, high risk, capital intense method of book and magazine production. Now technology has done the same for radio broadcasting.

It is early days and I am fast learning how to drive the software.

I intend moving to live broadcasting but at the moment I am playing music, dedications and poems 24/7.

One idea is to ask people to recite a favourite poem and send it to me in, if possible, .mp3 format*. I have a few I have recorded and put on the station.

You can access The Sentinel Radio in three ways:

Internet: https://s3.citrus3.com:2000/public/ thesentinelradio

Apple app (iPhones etc): Search in Apple Apps for The Sentinel Radio

Play for android phoness etc:

These on line radio stations are kept securely and privately behind a virtual private network where no possible tracking can exist and they do not store or provide any agency with customer data, hence my streaming operations are fully private and can not be

tracked in any way I however feverishly believe in intellectual property rights so I have a PPL Linear Webcast Licence so I can play all musical tracks and performars etc are rightly rewarded

*It can be recorded on a mobile and start, if you wish, with a short explanation about why the poem is significant followed by the title, the poet and read by [readers name] then the poem.

Support local

To advertise in The Sentinel with circa 3000 targetted readers and growing please email me: david@thesentinel.org.uk for a rate card. Now on the radio too

From the cutting-edge London design agency Here Design - writer and poet Philip Cowell, and award-winning designer Caz Hildebrand, author of The Herbarium, this playful, original, beautifully designed book brings to life the punctuation marks we use every day, including: The dashing dash So called "quotation marks" The colon: and on and on The shouty exclamation! The three dots of (Not forgetting the brackets) And even more

I have just been made aware of this very talented singer/ songwriter and you can hear him on the Sentinel Radio. As poet John Rice said: (Jack Pound is) a highly skilled guitarist and songwriter, his bluesy, often quirky style is particularly appreciated by discerning literary audiences… whilst the rest of us just enjoy the music.

You can buy this album on Spotify, Amazon, iTunes and All Download Sites You can get a taste at his web site at: https://www.jackpound.com

DO YOU NEED A LAPTOP?

NO ACCESS TO THE INTERNET?

Farmers'

in

This lovely poster plus many more local gifts can be seen at: www.quiztrail.co.uk

This

Hythe

Ushersfruitandveg nowon-line

Please save the date and spread the word! The 'First Quilt Show' is November 26th from 10 4. Entries can be dropped off any time. They will need a hanging sleeve attached for displaying. Here's a link if you need help doing that https://

com/watch?

Our new Tapas menu served every Friday and Saturday evening from 6:30pm-9:30pm. Please call 07944924448 to book a table

Newington

Please support your local Farmers' Markets in 2022

Report from your County Councillor for Newington

You may have seen reports about the financial problems faced by Kent County Council. The problems are serious but amid our own woes there is still work under way to help Kent residents facing financial difficulties.

It’s been confirmed that Kent families with children who receive free school meals will once again be provided with food vouchers by KCC to help them not just in the Autumn half-term break but also over Christmas, the Spring half term and next Easter. The vouchers will be available through the youngsters’ school or college. A £50 energy voucher will also be available (details about distribution to be announced). The funding for this comes from the money allocated to KCC through the Government’s Household Support Fund.

Here are some of the other ways KCC is working with partners to help. KCC’s Digital Kent www.digitalkent.uk website has information on discounted broadband packages known as social tariffs for eligible households. Routers and laptops are also available. KentTogether (developed to help people during Covid) continues to be available at 03000 41 92 92 and will direct people to financial and other advisory services. KCC has just launched ReferKent for organisations that provide help to use for making and tracking referrals. There’s also our Kent Support and Assistance Service (KSAS) which provides help for those experiencing a short term crisis. It’s intended to be there when all other possibilities have been exhausted.

Every 5 years KCC consults the public about our network of country parks and if you’d like to learn more and have your say then do go to letstalkkent.gov.uk where the consultation is now open until 12 December. Four of Kent County Council’s Country Parks were recently awarded Gold in the South &

Local Authority Treescapes Fund. This will see 15,824 trees established at 22 school sites and two NHS sites in Kent over the next two years. Since 2019 KCC has enabled or been directly responsible for the delivery of 111,921 trees and 6.032m2 of natural regeneration and we have a further 76,493 new trees already in the pipeline with more to come including 350 for my own division of Elham Valley. I am looking for suitable sites so do please contact me if you know of any in this parish or the wider Elham Valley (my division covers Hawkinge, Sellindge, Lyminge, Elham, Elmsted, Stelling Minnis, Stowting, Postling, Acrise, Densole and all points between).

Susan Carey Member for Elham Valley, Kent County Council

In the Church this November 2022

November 13. 10.00 am Remembrance service November 27 9.00 morning service

Advance notice: Wreath making 3rd December 11.30am to 14:30 Please check time nearer the day. Come and make your own Christmas wreath. Call Mel to book a space on 01303 237146.

Report from your District Councillor for Newington

I was delighted to learn that our revenues and benefits team’s efforts to support vulnerable members of the community have once again been recognised by a panel of judges. The authority has been named Benefits and/or Welfare Reform Team of the Year at the Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation's Performance Awards, as well as being highly commended in the Excellence in Social Inclusion category.

This important work is not done with awards in mind, but this recognition certainly underlines the customer-first mindset we have here at Folkestone & Hythe District Council.

If you need help with your council tax payments, rent payments and other bills and debts such as food and utilities please let us know so we can see if we can help.

A range of support measures are in place for our residents. This includes council tax reduction, financial support, COVID 19 self isolation payments and community hubs to help those who need it most. Details of help available can be found on the Council website at Help and support with your financesFolkestone & Hythe District Council (folkestone-hythe.gov.uk)

Trading Standards

Another team doing a great job are our Trading Standards officers who together with Kent Police visited 12 shops in Folkestone to ensure licensing conditions were being adhered to, and to make businesses aware of laws around selling alcohol to underage customers.

During the visits, spirits were seized, which were believed to be for sale without payment of the necessary UK duties, as well as

banned e cigarettes and vaping products.

Ship Street

Folkestone & Hythe District Council put forward a Brownfield Land Release Fund application for the Ship Street project last month.

The outcome is expected from central government by the end of the year. If successful, the money will be put towards the remediation of the former gasworks.

Theis exciting project falls within my Portfolio and I am optimistic that this funding will enable the council to continue developing an idea which could see a mixed-use, housing-led development with courtyard gardens, space for small shops and cafés, and public creative and cultural space on the site.

The changing seasons

The Autumn colours are putting on a good show this year albeit signalling that Winter is just around the corner. Let’s hope for a mild winter to get us through the current energy crisis.

Cllr David Godfrey Cabinet Member for Housing and Special Projects

Own (MYO)

Natural Christmas Decorations

and

a

In

Door Wreaths and Table Decorations

Sandgate

All now available in paperback and on Kindle

Set in Folkestone in the heady days of the late 60s.

They say if you can remember it, you weren't there!

Two plays One an imaginary meeting between Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan in a Fitzrovia pub The other is Caitlin Thomas reminiscing after the untimely death of her husband.

This is the tale of Hana, a young girl who moves from where she was born in London, to the Kent coast. They discover a wonderful area called Prince's Parade which is full of amazing animals, has a beautiful canal and is right next to the sea too! By buying this book you will be helping to protect it. All profits from it will be donated to the Save Prince's Parade campaign which aims to halt plans to develop the area into a housing estate.

Very funny, and surreal story about a man and a woman on their first date: Bolton Brady and Veda, set in London, November 2001. Bolton is forty, not into assets, has never lived with a woman and looked into the future and seen loneliness. So he decides to do something about it. He advertises in a lonely-hearts column, and receives six replies, but after experiencing one disaster after another only Veda remains between him and his sanity As the day unfolds the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred, building to a surreal, yet poignant, conclusion.

A Loose Cannon

This walk through the history of Sandgate to the present day was first performed at the Chichester Hall a decade ago on Wednesday, 9th June. It is now available on Kindle or in paperback

Now available on Amazon. Great evocative yarns of worldly travels.

The title of the book hints at how, as a ‘loose cannon’, Folkestone born Ted’s risk-taking got him into trouble on a number of occasions whilst being a considerable advantage in his working life.

As a young journalist, Reg Turnill met most of the prewar political personalities and later became the BBC's space correspondent being the only one in the press room when the historic Houston we have a problem message came from Apollo 11.

Ted Parker

Janet Holben Paperback Folkestone Cemetery has around 15,000 graves (27,000 people) there are stories of skulduggery and innocence, murder and bravery, grandeur and squalor but mostly there are stories of everyday people living their lives This account brings some of those stories back to life and will perhaps bring an understanding of how Folkestone was shaped by terrible wars, widespread disease, the unforgiving sea, the new railway and fashionable society but mostly, by the people who lived, loved, made their livelihood and finally died here

All now available in paperback and on Kindle

We have all sorts of interesting people come up to the garden at Enbrook Park to have a look around and to chat. Many visitors to the area and local residents drop by; some of them on a regular basis to see how the garden is doing; to look at what is in season and perhaps compare how the growth is in their own garden or allotment. So we compare notes and talk about the effect the weather had this summer on the growth now, as well as how many things are desperately trying to catch up or getting a ‘second wind’ and surprising us in midOctober.

As mentioned last week, there are plenty of fungi appearing all over the plot, and it is interesting to note how different people react to it. Unfortunately most of us know so very little about it, and when it appears in its many forms it is often viewed with suspicion and maybe a little bit of fear. Perhaps the best thing to be learnt about fungi is that it is to be respected and cannot be collected and eaten unless you really know your stuff – it can be lethal. However, just as it is possible to know one or two berries that are safe to forage from the wild (for example blackberries and elderberries), it is also wise to begin foraging for fungi by really knowing just one or two safe examples. Needless to say, none of our gardeners know a thing about our fungi, so we just leave well alone. What we do understand is

Petunias suddenly perked up again

Our thanks to the Sandgate Parish Council and the Community Gardeners for allowing us to reproduce this diary page. We hope to make this a monthly feature in the magazine but you can read all the diary entries by clicking on this box.

that fungi in a garden is a good thing, and generally is helping to bring food and moisture to the plants. As a subject there is so much to learn about it, and was probably something our ancestors knew much more about than many of us do today. One of our returning visitors is the elderly gentleman who gave us the little lemon tree which he planted up against the brick wall. He likes to see how it is getting on and to give it a few words of encouragement. He was pleased to observe this week that it was happily flowering away and had a tiny lemon too. The plant is only a mere 15cms tall but is really trying its best and certainly gives much pleasure for its stature. The gentleman was also comparing our banana tree to one in his garden which has produced a flower and now bananas! Well, who knows, maybe next year our banana tree might produce some fruit too.

Another interesting visit was from a couple who are temporarily living in Sandgate until their house purchase goes through in another part of Kent. They are avid bird watchers or ‘twitchers’, always armed with binoculars, as they walk around the area, and constantly on the alert to catch sight of migrating birds. They relayed how one morning whilst walking along Sandgate seafront, they caught sight of an entire flock (or muster) of storks flying across from the channel and inland. We are aware of storks nesting at Knepp in Sussex, so maybe this was where they were heading. It is an experience of sorts to have seagulls nesting on your roof, but just imagine if Sandgate had storks…. not too sure we are ready for that just yet. What’s next?

• Finish weeding the outside edge of the fence

• Keep picking up leaves and fallen sycamore seeds

• Fix the leaf compost area

• Keep up the weeding of all areas

If you have any comments to make about this publication please do email me. I would be very interested in the things you like and the things you don't like and the things you'd like to see included.

Thank you.

Visit our web site by clicking on our logo on the left Our family includes over 1,600 important historic houses, many with open doors, waiting to be explored Typically, Historic Houses properties remain lived in homes, and all of them have fascinating and distinctive stories to tell Great Christmas gift

Support local

There are many things I like in life, two of which are an invite to the reopening of libraries and serendipity. Last week I experienced both simultaneously when I was kindly invited to the reopening of the newly refurbished Sandgate Library. It certainly is a wonderful transformation, funded mainly, I believe, by a Section 106 on the back of the Shorncliff development. Modernised facilities with a colourful, well laid out main area which I have no doubt will provide a warm welcome to visitors and encourage the young to use this facility for many years to come.

Serendipity? A decade ago the Parish Chair, the late Robert Bliss, asked me to create an audio visual to help fight the prevalent threats to library closure by showing the wide uses that the Library offered the community as well as book lending. You can see the film at: https://sandgatepc.org.uk/library opening times/

The appropriate Kent County Council representative was invited to the Library and Robert and I did a presentation including the film. The result of the initiative was that the threatened closure of the Library was stopped and it has gone from strength to strength since.

At about the same time I was commissioned by a south London artist to make a video of his work. This I did. We never met and communicated only digitally. Imagine my surprise when I went into the Library only to see a specially created work to the right of the door by an

Tita and David Mccart

artist called David McCart. This was the man for whom I made the promotional video and to my surprise and delight he, and his wife Tita, were at the ceremony. Not only that, they had lived locally for five years. It was lovely to finally meet them but I guess their luck had to run out sometime!

You can see the video I made for him and his intriguing, talented, creative art work at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I1OPXB8Fk0&t=134s

Now that's what I call serendipity!

Rooms to hire in Sandgate

Need to hire a hall? There's no need to look any further Sandgate has a room to suit your needs.

Chichester Memorial Hall Old Fire Station Reading Room

St Paul's Church Hall

Tower Theatre

The Library

Whether for a party, business meeting, music evening, club meeting or annual general meeting, Sandgate has a room for you with space to accommodate from 10 to 300.

To see if there is one to suit your needs, do email the date(s) and number of attendees to david@thesentinel.org.uk.

We'll do the rest.

If you would like to submit an article or letter please email it to me. I will print almost anything as long as it’s not libellous, racist or unkind. Name must be supplied but can be withheld if requested

Please put your articles etc in plain text or Word and images should be in .jpg, .tiff or .png. My contact details are:

Address: Clyme House, Hillside Street, Hythe, Kent CT21 5DJ

Mobile: 07771 796 446; email: david@thesentinel org uk