{"id":34383,"date":"2025-10-09T14:43:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T13:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=34383"},"modified":"2025-10-09T14:43:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T13:43:46","slug":"phab-club-celebrates-40-fabulous-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=34383","title":{"rendered":"Phab Club Celebrates 40 Fabulous Years!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025100901.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nLast week, the Vale of White Horse \/ Abingdon Phab Club celebrated its 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n<p>The club was founded by David Carter to give people with disabilities, like himself, a welcoming place to socialise, have fun, and make friends. David&#8217;s legacy lives on through his parents, Barbara and Nigel Carter, who continue to run the club with great humour (and a little help from friends Sylvia, Lorraine, Colin and Sarah \u2014 all pictured).<\/p>\n<p>The celebration took place at Christ Church, Abingdon, the club\u2019s home. There was pizza from Caprinos &#8211; just across the road, a rousing &#8211; if slightly out of tune, &#8216;Happy Birthday to us\u2026 &#8216;, and chocolate cake. There was a &#8216;Secret Santa&#8217; style gift swap &#8211; everyone brought a little present (max. price \u00a35) and went home with a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>In 1995\u201396, Nigel received a Mayor\u2019s Award from then-Mayor Cllr Dr Jim Halliday for his work with Phab \u2014 originally known as the Physically Handicapped and Able Bodied Club. (The language has changed, but the name Phab remains.)<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025100902.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nNigel, now aged 80, is still going despite facing some serious health challenges over the years, with Barbara by his side. Nigel is a former undertaker &#8211; a business now run by his son &#8211; and also Pastor of Frilford Chapel, which also has a Youtube channel with a style all of its own (pictured above).<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025100903.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nSuch staying power is perhaps only matched by Cllr Jim Halliday, who, 30 years after presenting that Mayor&#8217;s Award, is leader of the Town Council yet again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, the Vale of White Horse \/ Abingdon Phab Club celebrated its 40th anniversary. The club was founded by David Carter to give people with disabilities, like himself, a welcoming place to socialise, have fun, and make friends. David&#8217;s legacy lives on through his parents, Barbara and Nigel Carter, who continue to run the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-club-and-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}