It all seems to happen at once, especially after a weeks holiday, so i will have quite a lot of info to catch up with, in todays blog,

I had a weeks holiday, didn't go anywhere this year, as the girlfriend has just finished having a new bathroom and kitchen fitted, literally finished on my first days holiday, a friend of her family arrived to fit new lights in her kitchen for her, and the very previous evening on my arrival, she had only just put the paint brushes away.

Saturday we were unpacking boxes from her old kitchen, and unpacking from shopping for the annual barbeque, there's only one day between amanda and luke her boy, and to celebrate, we hold a barbeque during a weekend in August, the weather was good, and the usual crowd turn up. This annual barbeque took place a week last Sunday.

For three years running i have been the chef and this year, we bought a new barbeque which was bigger than the old one, and it was a bonus as it was more than 50%, of the normal retail price.

The barbeque went well and i've update you on some of the activities during my week as i was on the internet from Amanda's house and we made discussions with our find of historical photos in the local museum. see august 5th entry, (i never got round to my garden as i ended up staying up Amandas all week)

So this blogg will catch up on last weekend and some of the news from the village that i've now caught up with. I got home Thursday and spent most of the time dealing with the pile of mail on my doorstep having been away for the best part of 7 days. Amanda came down on Friday to stay for a few days as she still had holidays left, and i was going to socialise in the Air Ambulance Fundraiser that councillors Bill and Lynne Vonk had been organising in the Red Lion. It was a year last weekend that i had organised the fund raising weekend in the Red Lion, which had raised almost five grand for the Hendy Pool,     

Back in March Tony the landlord and the regulars had asked was there going  to be a repeat of last years event and Bill and Lynne decided they wanted to support the air ambulance.

Prior to arriving in the Red my mum had phoned asking could i pop up to the fishery, as White Springs had a big event there starting that evening with sky sports filming the event, I told my mum we were popping to the Red Lion first and we would probably see her later.

It was the last qualifying match for the event, before the final in September of the welsh carp masters, with more than ten grand of prizes available at the final, and there was also a junior match organised on wednesday at the fishery

http://www.walescarpmasters.co.uk/Venues.htm

I hadn't been into the Red for more than a month, so i was quite looking forward to catching up on some gossip, and i also haven't seen much of Councillors Bill and Lynne Vonk, it must have been about three weeks ago that we last met,

Anyway Amanda and myself arrived in the Red Lion at about 3.30pm and preperation was still on going, the barbeque hadn't been set up and they were still planning on what items were being auctioned on Friday night and Saturday night and sticking raffle tickets on the smaller items that the Hendy Pool had donated from what was left from the Pontarddulais carnival,

At the carnival we had childrens toys in one bucket a prize every time an adults were three for a pound, at the red lion all the prizes were in one bucket.

Vernon was also doing the lucky dip style raffle 3 tickets for a pound with a 50% chance of winning a prize there were just as many loosing tickets in the bucket in the Red Lion, I had £4 pounds worth after it had started and my 12 tickets produced 7 winners, I had a tin of spaggetti, a tin of macaroni cheese, a bottle of perfume, a set of three wooden chopping boards, a tin of french onion soup, a jewellery case, and two stainless steel milk jugs, the type you normally get in a tea pot set.

A further dip later by Amanda saw us win a tin of jam sponge pudding, a vintage corgi toy car, (a 1950's bus) some kids books, and three plastic toys that normally come from inside the free mcdonalds happy meals, which we quickly lost to Vernons four year old grand son who was watching me collect the prizes, if Amanda shouted out a winner, any raffle ticket over 400 was a looser, all the lower numbers were winners.

This small lucky dip event saw 99% of the prizes being claimed, Vernon said there were only five items left on the table which people had won and said they didn't want it re-raffle it, I understand from Vernon more than £40 was raised by this event alone, there was also a main raffle, the hot dog barbeque stall, and the auctions in the evenings, so final amounts collected haven't been announced yet?

Anyway i started this blogg that i was catching up on the gossip, apparently on Wednesday youths smashed the Hendy Village glass bus shelter pain and only two months ago the phone box window were smashed, i was also catching up on the red lion fire incident which i had heard about but was being told it by witnesses and tony offered to play back his cctv coverage as he has four digital cameras which are recorded on a hard disc which records 24/7 and holds about 60 days of recording before starting and recording in a loop, but i had already seen footage on you tube, which had been sent to me by a local.

The Wales today news came on and Amanda had a phone call, was she watching the news, because Pontarddulais was on, so everybody piled out of the beer garden and into the put to watch the news, and parts of the you tube footage were shown on the news bulletin, the tv was showing this report because of the evening post story which has since published lots of letters about the incidents in the village

http://tinyurl.com/2pttu3 story also pasted below

this is a continuation from the earlier blog...... this morning? i altered the time of entry so they read in sequence....

now where was i? ...... ahh yes anti sociable behaviour and watching the six oclock news in the Red Lion during the charity weekend. It was absolutely shocking and one of the youngsters at the function was prowed because he had been filmed climbing the lloyds bank wall and was sitting on the second story window ledge by his mates and the news article posted earlier showed this.. He was going around pleased with himself that he had now been on the news?

my believe is that the country is in a very poor state and whilst shocking we are lucky as we haven't had any gang fighting and shootings like the ones in the national press lately. you have to wonder why do young adults resort to this and the local evening post is doing a good job highlighting this with some 19 people emailing and commenting on line

http://tinyurl.com/2pttu3 anyway what happened next highlighted the issue

I had forgotten something in the house and Amanda said if i was popping home for two minutes could i pop and buy here a lucky dip for the lottery, so off i go and on route to the spar in Hendy i decide to inspect, the bus shelter as part of my gossip and catch up, was the fact that kids had smashed the windows of the bus stop, on driving past theres six youngsters in the bus stop not one over fourteen and there's no suprise they had two full flaggons of strongbow in their possession.

I drive around the square and park by the spar, there's four further boys standing talking and texting on their phone and there's three young girls on the opposite side of the road outside the butchers also texting on their phones, two gents are walking past the six in the bus stop and comment to me as a councillor what are my views and where's the police and out come two ladies and also comment is this village safe to walk any more? ,

I spoke to a fifth resident inside the spar who had also spotted the under age gang drinking on the square and assured them i would phone the police, so i rung the police and got through to Carmarthen. Saturday morning the police rung me back to say when they arrived there wasn't any youngsters out and about on the square, (yet i was told by a further four residents in the village on Saturday) that they had seen them. The villages badly needs some sort of youth community activity to keep these underage youngsters off the street corners. I'm back in the Red Lion by 6.50pm and myself and Amanda stay until 7.30pm before moving on sending our appologies, to deal with other promises made earlier in the day.

..................

Saturday myself and Amanda are up the fishery helping up there, the carp masters qualifier is on, sky sports were filming the event and there was a junior match on?

i spent some time down the lake talking to anglers and gathering photos from peoples digital cameras, my dad catches me down loading the photos to the white springs web pages and face book and because the fishery is busy, he was in a bad mood, stressed

anyway i added photos to the whitesprings face book book topic

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4227310838

below are just two of several added from this weekend of the sky sports camera man and one of the local pontarddulais anglers who had entered the event?

I probably deserved the row off my dad because i was also scanning the angling press into my photo bucket, i had sent a photo to the anglers mail of the 8lb eel, the current uk record is only 11lb 14oz and we understand the monster we had caught at white springs is not far short of the welsh record