The September 2020 edition of Round & About, and the Autumn 2020 edition of the Town Crier were delivered to a lot of houses in Abingdon yesterday.

These magazines have been posted through our door for at least twenty years. The Town Crier did stop for a couple of years, but is back again thanks to the 2019-2023 Town Council. One of the councillors told me it was brought back because not everybody can be reached by the internet.

The Town Crier comprises news and events from Abingdon-on_Thames Town Council.

2 pages have news on the Neighbourhood Plan, whose start has been put back by the pandemic. Consultants will start by reaching out to the ‘brilliant Coronavirus Response Teams” and hope to use the 400 street contact volunteers to help in setting up local consultation exercises (using video conferencing) that together will form a picture of life in Abingdon.

There is a page on CIL – the Community Infrastructure Levy. It is the charge local councils can make on building developments. The Town Council is consulting on its CIL policy and would welcome responses by 25th September. If the Town Council gets a Neighbourhood Plan in place they will get 25% instead of 15% of CIL money for the town. Currently the largest amount goes to the County Council (for education and roads), followed by the District Council, and then the Town Council.

There is a page on Heritage Weekend on 19th and 20th September. A lot of this will be films about Abingdon’s historic heritage or self guided tours. More about that at https://abingdonheritage.org.uk/

There is to be a public consultation on the Radley Lakes masterplan. A socially distanced event will happen at Thrupp Lake on Sunday 20th September 1pm – 5pm.

The museum reopening (September 5th) and the council’s virtual events page are also mentioned.

Round & About also has news on Heritage Open Days. There are pages of ‘Disjointed Rambling’ with news and upcoming events.

From them I learned that Oxford Wood Recycling in Suffolk Way have been given a £250,000 award from the People’s Postcode Lottery. Oxford Wood Recycling are a social enterprise that stop good wood being wasted, and provide volunteering and employment opportunities.

The Atom Society have an online talk on 17th September. The talk is titled: Natural Light and Fresh Air: The Ultimate Human Drugs?

Martin Buckland is doing a talk via ZOOM on 21st September for the Radley History Club on The Wilts and Berks Canal: Past, Present and Future.

There is lots more if you read your Round & About.

There have been Abingdon Blog youtube videos for over 5 years.

Easily the most popular, from last year’s Mayor of Ock Street, is ‘The Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancing Princess Royal’, which has 15,422 views. It can be viewed on Youtube.

There used to be an end of month youtube slideshow. This month I am trying that out again but with a difference. It has moving pictures and real background sounds … Here is ‘Abingdon Blog – April 2015 – on Youtube.’

Press the youtube logo bottom right, after it starts, to see it bigger on youtube …

People in Abingdon recently received a letter addressed to ‘The lovely person who lives at … (your address)’

It was to tell them of a new internet forum which has been launched in our area streetlife.com.

It is very like Facebook but, whereas on Facebook you see what your friends are saying, on Streetlife you see what people in your neighbourhood are saying.

So you can choose to follow all or any of the following:
Abingdon
Northcourt
Caldecott
Wildmoor
Shippon
Radley Park
Culham
Sunningwell
Gozzard’s Ford
Radley

A media company called Archant, together with partners, run the enterprise, and are rolling it out nationally. The site will generate revenue from targeted local advertising.

So it will be interesting to see how the forum develops. Already a few local groups have started promoted themselves through the forum: including Abingdon Hydro and the Breakaway Club. People with a common interest, such as paper crafting or finding a reading group are finding each other. There was a lot of talk of ghosts in Abingdon’s old houses – always a good one to break the ice. And a resident from Spring Road is encouraging locals to join the British Legion (only £20 annually).

Oxfordshire County Council are proposing to raise the cost of the Town Centre Residents’ car parking permit from £100 a year to £120 a year. Objections, specifying the grounds for objection, need to be received by 6th March 2015. (found under public notices on page 36 of this week’s Herald ….)