Old Basing Cricket Club The 2013 cricket season is almost upon us and OBCC welcome new members of all ages, both adult and juniors. The club is situated at the Old Basing recreation ground in the heart of the village. The club are running 3 x Saturday X1s in the Hampshire cricket league, a Sunday social side and colts teams at U11, U13 and U15 level, also new this year will be the introduction of cricket coaching aimed specifically at U9 . U11s & U13s start training at the recreation ground on Monday 8 April, adults and U15s on Thursday 18 April and the U9s start on Friday April 27.  All training starts at 6pm and will run throughout the season until mid July. The club is approaching its Bicentenary year and has excellent facilities including a fantastic bar. A date for the diary, Friday 23 August, the international touring cricket  team, Lashings World X1 will play Old Basing at the recreation ground!! A major event not to be missed. Please visit our website www.ukcricket.org/oldbasing For further OBCC  information please contact Malcolm Curtis, club chairman, 07745384761, John Huntingdon, 07966394599 or Angus Stronach, colts chairman, 07929841085.    

20 January 2013 Peoplefund.it works for HART IN less than a week HART Wildlife Rescue raised an amazing £1887 to achieve the target needed to build a new waterbird aviary to cater for the needs of the many abandoned ducklings it admits every year. The Hampshire based animal rescue centre used Peoplefund.it – a crowdfunding website created by KEO digital, the makers of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight, River Cottage and Chicken Out! to realise its dream. “We are always open to new ways of fundraising and have been overwhelmed by the success of this initiative by someone who was working with us for a short while,” said trustee Laura Martin. “We are very grateful to Ava Pierro, who was funded for three months by Vodafone, and set up this exciting project to help our facilities grow.” HART Wildlife Rescue cares for sick, injured and abandoned wildlife across Hampshire and the surrounding counties. As well as rescuing and rehabilitating animals, the charity offers advice for local vets, the police and RSPCA on wildlife care, as well as members of the public and local groups. It continues to admit more casualties every year and desperately needs to expand to cater for all…

The Met Office have issued a Cold Weather warning for an area which includes Old Basing & Lychpit… With the current cold spell we have over most of the UK, the areas of Old Basing and Lychpit, along with the rest of Basingstoke and Hampshire, are currently falling under the Met Office’s ‘Level 3 – Severe’ alert for cold weather. This is likely to be further compounded in the coming days with snow fall. So with this in mind, as well as (hopefully) being able to enjoy any snow we get in the area, please also consider others in the community, particularly the elderly and vulnerable as they may find such weather harder to cope with. So, from the Met Office: ‘There is a 90% probability of severe cold weather/icy conditions/heavy snow between 0900 on Thursday and 0800 on Monday in parts of England. This weather could increase the health risks to vulnerable patients and disrupt the delivery of services. Please refer to the national Cold Weather Plan and your Trust’s emergency plan for appropriate preventive action.’ And the Government & NHS advice for this level of warning includes: Insulating your homes and protecting water pipes from freezing Looking out…

Bird Seed Fat Cakes, feeding the birds in Old Basing & Lychpit   We thought with the onset on some pretty cold weather for the Basingstoke (Old Basing & Lychpit included!), and with the prospect of snow coming too, that you may like this article from Valar Well-being, helping keep the birds in our Old Basing & Lychpit fed.     To read the complete article at Valar Well-being click here   Bird Seed Fat Cakes –  How To Feed our Feathered Friends in Winter With the onset of the Winter weather, we are not the only ones feeling the cold. Our feathered friends need a little help at this time of year as the ground can be too hard to get adequate food. It’s a sad fact but many small birds die over the colder months as they can’t get enough vital energy to keep them going. A fun way of helping them out is to make bird seed fat cakes which can either be hung from a tree or turned out onto a bird table when set. You’ll not only be helping out the birds, but you’ll also get the enjoyment of watching them frolic in your garden……

Away in a Potting Shed  A HEDGEHOG Christmas got off to a joyful start as Basingstoke Pets at Home manager Peter Marshall presented a cheque for over £2000 to help the sick, injured and underweight wild animals being cared for HART Wildlife Rescue.  “It is wonderful to see so many Pets at Home customers showing how much they care about wildlife and we want to say a BIG thank you to them and the staff at the store for their kindness and support,” said HART volunteer Juliet Auburn.  To raise awareness of the plight of hedgehogs in Britain another HART volunteer, Victoria Ewart, has designed a special hedgehog nativity scene at the Pets at Home store. Set in a gardener’s potting shed, baby Jesus lies in a gardener’s trug among the thorns and secateurs. Mary and Joseph, the Kings bearing gifts, shepherds and onlookers are all hedgehogs.  “There are references to Jesus as a gardener in the Bible and hedgehogs are the gardeners’ best friends. So what better way highlight the potential disaster facing hedgehogs. Their numbers are plummeting so fast they could be extinct within a decade,” commented Juliet.  Based at Medstead, near Alton, HART wildlife hospital – the…

Don’t become a victim of crime this Christmas… The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau has compiled a list of twelve frauds that we suspect criminals may use during this festive period, along with great advice to help prevent you becoming a victim of crime. If you have been a victim of fraud, now, or in the past, it is important that you report the matter. You can do this by visiting the UK National Fraud & Internet reporting centre: Action Fraud – www.actionfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040 So – on to the… 12 Frauds of Christmas   1. Online Shopping Consumers have increasingly turned to the convenience of online shopping, sitting in front of their computers and ordering items from the comfort of their own homes. Fraudsters will take advantage of this demand and have created bogus websites to advertise goods and services that are counterfeit or will not be delivered. Items advertised on these bogus sites as genuine, will be fake: of poor quality and or unsafe to use. In many cases the fraudster will have no intention of sending you anything in return for your money. How you can protect yourself: • If possible use online retailers / brands…

The following information is courtesy of the Basingstoke Astronomical Society. Please visit their website at http://www.basingstokeas.org.uk/ for details of all their monthly meetings and talks. They are a great group of people and well worth checking out! Some great night sky viewing this winter… The Phases of the Moon begin this month with the Third Quarter on the 6th   and New Moon is on the 13th.  First Quarter is then on the 20th and the Full Moon occurs on the 28th.  The shortest day of the year occurs on the Winter Solstice on 21st. This is when the Sun halts its apparent southerly motion in our skies. Mercury rises an hour before sunrise in the South-East. When looking for Mercury, be sure NEVER TO LOOK AT THE SUN. Always observe while the Sun is still below the horizon.   Venus also rises before the Sun and can be used as a pointer to find Mercury. Venus is unmistakable and is easily the brightest object in the sky. Seen close to the horizon Venus has often been mistaken for a UFO or a streetlight. Mars lies very low in the South West by the 20th and may be spotted close to the horizon….

Don’t just chuck them away – Check out our Eco & Fashion friendly guide to recycling your old clothes!   If there are some outdated ties or battered jeans in your wardrobe, there’s no need to throw them out. With a little bit of creativity you can create a whole new look from items that you thought you’d never wear again.   Ties can be made into skirts or bags and jeans can be cut off and made into skirts. If you have a little bit of imagination and a needle and thread, the sky is the limit with what can be created from remnants of fabric and old clothes. Making a tie skirt is simple. You’ll need about 20 ties in various colours. Then, decide what length you would like your skirt to be and cut the ties accordingly, being sure to add a few centimetres for hemming. Personally I like to measure from the widest part of the tie as this gives a nice pattern to the bottom of the skirt (and saves extra sewing). If you have a dressmaker’s dummy you can set the waist and hip size to your measurements and then pin and stitch the…

The Perfect Gift for Christmas Help support your local attraction by purchasing a Basing House annual pass! Your historically important local attraction is a wonderful place to bring family and friends between March – October and provides the perfect venue for a picnic. Full of wide open spaces, it’s a great place to unwind with a leisurely stroll and for your children/ grandchildren to let off steam. Perfect place for young and old to learn about the Tudor period and the part Basing House played in the English Civil War! Events coming up in 2013 include the Sealed Knot ‘Civil War Action!’ event on 31 March & 1 April,  a variety of activities during the summer holidays, a Tudor themed day on 21 September and more! Give the gift of spending time together to a family, friend or colleague you know by purchasing our Annual pass online at http://www.hants.gov.uk/shop/home.php?cat=286 All of the staff at Basing House would like to wish the community of Old Basing a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New year and thank you for supporting us! Follow us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/?sk=welcome#!/pages/Basing-House/144336432254794  & Twitter  @BasingHouse    for all the latest news. 

 Bo Welcomes CTW Kitchens and Bathrooms CTW Kitchens and Bathrooms is owned and run by Carl Weller. He has been in this trade for 20 years. He loves his job, and is passionate about the work he does. If you want honesty from someone, very hard to find these days, you’ll get it from Carl. He understands to you he is a stranger, why should you him? Here are a few reasons why:  Most of his work is generated from personal recommendation. This is the best one can get, as it means someone out there has liked what Carl has achieved for them, and taken it upon themselves to tell someone else about him. Other ways are his website, of which he am really proud as it is all Carl’s own hard work, no ‘Gallery shots’ at all. The other very important channel is checkatrade.com  Carl treats every kitchen or bathroom like it’s his own. Carl and his team are local guys. They have young families, and their children are probably at the same school as yours. Carl hates mess and people not turning up on time, and those tradesmen who promise and never deliver. Well, that’s not the case…