Meridian Index

PAGE INDEX

Football Club

Camera Club

History

 BELL APPEAL

The Bishop of Ely will be in Swavesey on Sunday 17th April 2005 to dedicated and give thanks for the augmentation of the bells.

Andrew Stevens. Telephone: 231433 or email: steeplekeeper@elyda.org

Swavesey Institute Football Club -Nov/Dec 2004

First Team (Sponsored by Swavesey Post Office and Newsagents)
Phil Baines has steered the first team onto the fringe of the Kershaw Senior B promotion race. The team also remain undefeated in cup football this season.  Goals have been flowing freely from the midfielders and forwards and the signs look good for a fourth successful season in a row for the first team.

Reserves (Sponsored by The White Horse)
The dark nights brought a set of gloomy results in both the league and cup for "Bonesey" Aldhouse's charges in his first season at the helm of the Reserves in BIS League 4B.  From sitting on the edge of the promotion race when the clocks went back, a lack of goals from his ageing team has seen Aldhouse worrying about being dragged into a spring 2005 relegation battle.

Veterans (Sponsored by The White Horse)
The team for players aged 35 and over started their season with a reverse against a strong Bluntisham team.  The first league fixture saw the side narrowly lose at Ramsey in an evening fixture under floodlights.  The team train each Thursday night and have a full programme of fixtures this season.  Please contact Jerry Ladell on 201018 if you are old enough and fancy playing.

Want to play?
It is still not too late to join the club and register for the 2004/05 season.  If you are interested in playing on Saturdays contact Phil Baines on 200377.  Check the Swavesey fixtures in the Cambridge Evening News on a Friday night and come and support your village side.  Saturday fixtures start at 2pm in February and 3pm in March, with all home games being played on Swavesey Green, followed by drinks afterwards in The White Horse.

Sponsorship
Any potential club sponsors should ring Jim Foster on 232842 to discuss ideas.  The club is currently looking to purchase new substitutes suits, are you interested in helping and having your company name appear on the suits at both home and away matches?  Give Jim a call if you can help.

Referees
Cambridgeshire Football Association are crying out for new referees.  If you fancy taking up the whistle, give Richard Nichols a call on 01223 576770 ext202.

What You All Asked For

Don't say we never listen: over the years we have had numerous requests for help on all aspects of photography. This year we decided to set aside two evenings for more concentrated discussions, somewhat on the lines of a seminar, and on the first of these we assembled in four main groups, relating to digital photography, SLRs and slides, printing and presentation. At the end of the evening we handed out questionnaires, first, to see how helpful our members felt it had been, and second, for suggestions for our similar meeting planned for March. It seems this type of evening proved popular with our members so we shall be including them in our regular programme from now on. Requests have already been made for help to improve the quality of digitally-produced prints and explanations of the effects of different exposures, shutter-speeds and apertures.

On our last meeting of 2004 not only did we have our Christmas party, lots of raffle prizes, plenty of wine and the special treat of Jane's mince-pies, but also the opportunity to see Dudley Simons' exhibition of black and white prints. These are the result of the utmost painstaking and time-consuming work on a valuable collection of Samuel Butler's old glass negatives, dating from the mid-19th century, which belong to St John's College. Due to their having been kept in far from ideal conditions Dudley has had to use all his considerable skills to produce anything at all from this collection of well over a thousand slides but of these we were shown a hundred excellent mounted photographs full of detail previously unsuspected, providing a fascinating record of life in the very earliest days of photography. The completed project was so successful that a selection was exhibited in the College and later in Tate Britain. We were all impressed by the artistic quality of Samuel Butler's work and equally so by the skills displayed by our own Dudley using modern digital methods to recover these historic photographs from virtual oblivion and neglect.

Closer to home you will be interested to hear that on the 27th of January John Shepperson will be showing us some of his vast collection of old photographs, this time of Swavesey.  Please come along; visitors are always welcome for a fee of £3, deductible from membership fees if one joins later.

Mo Hadfield
Swavesey Camera Club

Swavesey and District History Society

held their Annual General Meeting on Thursday 9th December.  The society is thriving with 58 active members and a record number of visitors Carole Shaw (Chairman) congratulated the society on another successful year and hoped that 2005 would see this success continuing.

The first four meetings of the Autumn were all very well attended and the New Year starts on 18th January with a talk by John Drake on "The Historic Gardens of Cambridgeshire"  a talk which may well lead members to visit these in the summer.

February 15th is devoted to archive footage of Cambridgeshire on Film 1912-1960 and March 15th is a talk by Veronica Bennett on "Conservation and Housekeeping  in the National Trust"

The society books speakers on a wide range of subjects and visitors are always welcome to their monthly meetings. All meetings are held at Swavesey Village College and details are available from Valerie Haynes 01954 231238