November is when clubs and organisations really

get going with their winter programmes. See the Diary

(page 5) for details of all meetings and events. If you

love flowers and would like to know more about making

beautiful arrangements, go along to the Flower Club

meeting and see how they do it (page 29). Wildlife

enthusiasts will enjoy the meetings of the Somerset

Wildlife Trust in Caryford Hall.

Welcome back, in what we hope will be a golden
autumn – a season that seems to start earlier and earlier.
One of the most pressing problems Bruton has is the
speed at which some drivers tear through the town as
though they were being pursued by malign forces. How
to slow them down is a constant worry. Flora Rawlingson
Plant tells us about an initiative to tackle this question
(page 17) – support from readers will be more than
welcome.

our summer double issue (July and August) brings you a very full diary, with plenty of attractions for everyone, whether fêtes, concerts or sporting events. Bruton’s Church Fête is on Saturday 12 July (1–4pm), with the usual mix of stalls and entertainments enlivened with one or two extras, such as a children’s zoo. See the advertisement on page 39.
Lisa Pickering reports on the Packhorse Fair (page 23), the highlight of the late May Bank Holiday, which was busier and better than ever.

Summer is on its way, and with it the start of outdoor activities and feasts. The fête season gets under way next month, and Jocelyn Crawford is hoping for lots of volunteers to help with the planning of the St Mary’s Church Fête, which will take place on 12 July. Please contact her if you would like to help: 812 333 or jocelyncrawford@hotmail.co.uk (see also page 33).
Among anniversaries this year is the centenary of the founding of the Ward Library in Bruton, built on the site of an old pub. Victoria Glendinning gives a short outline of the library’s history and how it came into being (page 17). Its continued existence is still somewhat precarious, so please give it your support as much as
you can.

For the second consecutive year, the Sunday Times list of the 101 best places to live in Britain, published on 16 March, included Bruton, as well as Frome and Sherborne. We townspeople know this, of course, but it’s nice to have it nationally recognised. And on 22 March the Guardian ran a two-page spread on the forthcoming Hauser & Wirth gallery opening at Durslade. Some see all this coverage as having a down-side – few houses come on the market here. I’ve heard some negative views, too, about the Durslade gallery, which stem more from a lack of knowledge than a real understanding of what H&W are trying to do. Come July, everyone in the town and the villages around will be able to go and see for themselves, when the venue opens to all. The intention is to bring enjoyment and an extra dimension to living in our beautiful part of the world.

We seem to have a lot of fundraising events going on this month, and one of the first articles in Community News is a story about the Somerset Flood Relief Fund, a small but effective arm of the Somerset Community Foundation. You can make a donation, or volunteer to help – see page 17.
More volunteers are wanted to help with Diocesan concerns – the online newsletter Connect gives details. See page 21 for how to access it. The team would be delighted to hear from anyone with a little spare time and a sympathetic ear.

The New Year has brought Weather with a capital W – and we have been luckier here than people on the Levels, who were awash in January. We didn’t escape lightly, though. The spectacular hailstorm that struck on 3 January, with stones the size of gobstoppers (see picture on page 18), did a great deal of damage, and I understand that loss adjusters have been run off their feet. The plastic roof of my conservatory was punched through as if by machine-gun fire, and the boggy area at the bottom of my garden is now a swiftly flowing stream!