Copyright 1980-2010
The Wychwood

The telephone rang and I propped the current issue of The Wychwood, which I had been reading, behind the goldfish bowl. The call over, I glanced towards the bowl and was surprised to see the page behind the glass had changed and now seemed strangely  to have a summary of stories from the 2039 edition of the magazine. Hurriedly I jotted down the main items before they disappeared and here they are some thirty years in advance! It seems that things are going to continue to get better and better.

Problem Solved for Milton Football Team.
By converting the four goal uprights and the corner flags into wind generators, Milton Football team has managed to install a further eight generators on its field so avoiding a fine for not meeting its norm for a reduced institutional carbon footprint - as set by The North Western European Landscape Management Office. This brings the total number of wind generators in the Wychwoods to 2,350…

Good News for Wychwood Patients
At last our new medical handling and processing centre is open. The new unit, The Darzi Memorial Polyclinic at Bournemouth, will have a capacity to treat more than one thousand patients daily. Patients from the Wychwoods will enjoy free travel each morning by luxury coach, leaving the Sharia legal centre (the former library) at Milton at six in the morning and returning before nine in the evening. A stop will be made at Winchester on the return journey to collect prescriptions…

Shipton WI Report
The President, Mr Joe Pratley, welcomed Evelyn Mittelweg from the Schools Gay and Lesbian Educational  and Support Materials Centre who gave an entertaining and informative talk wittingly entitled “Who cares who does what to whom and why”. Several members felt afterwards that this had cleared up points where they had been confused...

Recent Planning Applications
It now looks as though the new Tony Blair Resettlement Estate of five thousand eco-homes for economic migrants without permits will go ahead in Shipton on the land behind Sinnels Field. Older residents may remember this as Five Ways and the former Allotments. It will be linked to Burford by a new four-lane toll-way with an interchange at Dog Kennel Lane. There will be a stylish twenty four hour garage and counselling centre built in the grounds of the old Shipton Court (recently recycled by Hickmans Environmental Services). The Government is awarding West Oxfordshire Council fifty community points for services to diversity thanks to this development which should allow for Council taxes to be reduced by five per cent to an average £20,000 per household next year..

European Court to Hear Longstanding Case
The European Court will shortly hear arguments to decide who is responsible for rebuilding the walls on the Chipping Norton toll road near the bridge over the Evenlode. These have been down since the floods of 2007. While on the subject of water, we would like to bring to your attention the fact that new Tide Tables have been published for Ascott.

Centenarians Remember
We recently emailed the hundred centenarians in the Wychwoods to let us have examples of life in the middle of the last century which would be hard to imagine today. Here are some of the more unbelievable things they came up with!
“We would walk to school all by ourselves. At school we had mental arithmetic first thing. Most of us could read easy books by the age of seven. (Ed.  surely a misprint for 17?). There was no simplified English then.”

“When we walked home at the end of the school day our Mum would be there and we would eat with the whole family on a table in a room called a dining room.”

“You could say pretty much what you liked about anything….there was no need to clear it first with the Office for the Prevention of Community Disharmony.”

“The shops closed half a day during the week and all day on Sundays. There was no closing for prayer times three times daily as today.”