Our most sincere congratulations to Anne Garsed, who has been named an Honorary Burgess for this year’s Guild. The award comes as a result of the key role she has played in the Fair Trade movement and in Preston gaining the status of a ‘Fair Trade City’.

Band of Hope – A mature student at UCLAN is requesting information, memories, memorabilia, photographs etc. to help in her study of the movement in the Preston area. If you can help, please contact Susan Bailey (01772 613530) or speak to Malcolm or Joyce Rae.

Norman Irish of Poulton-le-Fylde is looking to contact former members of Moor Park Methodist School who took part in the 1952 Guild, with a view to meeting up during Guild Week. (Sorry that this doesn’t give you much notice!). He can be contacted on 01253 891698 or by e-mail

The induction of the new Vicar of neighbouring St Cuthbert’s, the Rev. Eric Paul Bossward, is scheduled for 21^st September.

Did you read about the bellringers of St Albans Cathedral, who’d agreed to ring the ‘Chariots of Fire’ theme tune every time Team GB won a gold medal? I doubt whether they’d reckoned on so many gold medals being won – and I don’t suppose the neighbours had, either!

People have been taking holidays, hence the list of exotic places from which church magazines and news sheets have come: Carlisle, Gloucester & Hereford Cathedrals, the Methodist Church at Tewkesbury (where Eileen Beardsley is a Steward), Chipping Campden (a very up-market place with an up-market parish magazine!), Cirencester Parish Church (a fine medieval ‘wool church’), St Oswald’s at Warton (Carnforth), St James’ at Birkdale (Southport) and the Chapelwood United Methodist Church of Houston, Texas. Many thanks to all who have taken the trouble to pass them on.

My sincere thanks also to Mrs Hackett who regularly (via Elsie Hastwell) keeps me supplied with the mag. from St Paul’s, Warton (Preston) and with the highly colourful production from Oakworth Methodist Church; Allan Clarke always makes sure I have a mag. from our local URC; an unknown member of neighbouring Christ Church unfailingly delivers theirs to my door and John Butterworth regularly provides a variety from the Fylde coast – and further afield too. Until she moved away recently, Audrey Perry always kept me supplied with the Broughton parish mag.

Were you, like me, left shaking your head in wonderment at the advert in the national newspapers about a month ago, inviting you to take part in a FREE bike ride? For daftness, I reckon it ranks alongside Ian Thorpe’s observation during coverage of the Olympic swimming events, of there being water in ALL the lanes! Then, of course, there was the case of an Olympic cycling spectator being arrested for not smiling enough. (I really am getting old!) Oh! One last thought: there were 204 delegations at the London Olympics and yet the United Nations assures us that there are only 195 sovereign nations in the world. So which planet did the others come from?