Forshaw Heath & Earlswood BoD in Warwickshire

Welcome to the new look blog. To be honest it really isn't a lot different from my other blog. There is a story behind changing blogging platforms and it is simple. Blogspot has served me well for over ten years and to be honest with you I would have quite happily stayed put had I done my homework before deciding to host my own website.  Honestly the only reason I have moved to Wordpress is because my domain hosts made it easy for me to do so. I am loving the plugins Wordpress has freely available. The theme I have choosen is simple, once again it is black and white. You may or may not notice I try to find freely available tools and see how best they serve my purpose. I do actually want to move forwards with this blog and make it a little more interactive. Perhaps by exploring Youtube, Podcasts, Text to Speech and Speech to Text, Video editing software. You may be asking now, Hey! what has that go to do with the local community?  That is also simple. This time ten years ago  our lo

Why should we have text to speech on our blogs and websites? Well it is simple we need to cater and be inclusive of those that may not be able to see or read as well. Just as the web has become visual with it's videos and photographs. It is now becoming  audible with many tools freely available to make the written word become an audible word. It is incredible how far we have come in such a short period of time i this electronic world. All to often we hear about the bad sides of the the Internet and often forget, like everthing else it has its good sides as well. Just like real life you have to choose what to trust and what to ignore. I often think about my Mother  and how the technology that we have today would have helped her. Mum's case was a bit different she needed speech to text as she had amongs other things atheritic in her hands which prevented her from writing or typing. So I can see a huge benefit to making websites and blogs audible rather than just legible. Todays v

Let me have my moan before I get to the point. OMG ! I am so tired now of paddling down the drive in my wellies, getting drenched everytime I walk outside, having a dirty muddy car and all day everyday being dark and gloomy . Even the cats have retreated to indoors and give me the evil look. As if the weather is my fault. Good god its only the end of February and the daffodils have  already made an appearance. poor little things. The drive is flooded once again, the lawn is water logged, the lane  and its grass verges are a disgraceful weather beaten mess aided and abetted by 40 ton lorries, the dog barely wants to poke his nose outside, the trees are looking decidedly  dodgey as they brave the wind and their roots and trunks soak up the water.  The garden looks like a mud bath. Whats the betting come May or June we are all complaining about the lack of rain and the heat. So To The Point However as I gripe and moan I then have to think of us as being very lucky compared to many, who d

If it wasn't so sad it would be funny, I have made it one of my little missions in life to try and keep the grass verges and ditches free of litter. Just so it is not the task it was when I first did it. Obviously from a previous post you may have seen, I noticed the return of a vodka bottle. I hold my hands up I didn't pick it up there and then. I wasn't in suitable attire, had the dog with me and it was pouring with rain as it has been every day for ages. Any way on Monday 17th Feb I noticed my one lonely Vodka bottle had been joined by three friends however it was still

As those of you that may have read I decided to do something about the litter in the lane I live in may be a week or a week and a half ago. I almost filled one wheelie bin with litter and disregarded or lost items. Yes I took my wheelie bin down the lane. Like an idiot I started picking litter up at the top of the lane and not at the bottom. OMG!!!  that wheelie Bin got heavy. Next time I will work from the bottom of the lane up to the top As you may remember I was baffled by the volume of vodka bottles I found. By the time I collected and disposed of them there were approximately 20 Smirnoff No 21 bottles. On the grass verge and in the ditch, scattered at various different intervals, all on the same side of the road. Although I thought it was strange and perhaps thought oh well we have just been through the Christmas & New year season. No excuse I know! I couldn't believe it yesterday when yet again the Mystery Guest SMIRNOFF 21 made an appearance.  More than anything I hop

Whilst reflecting on what this blog was about, I decided to go back to some of my earlier posts to see exactly what was on my mind. Broadband was one of my top 5 subjects.  I got really excited ten years ago when I almost had a download speed of 5 MB. My how things have changed I am now the proud owner of of a broadband connection of between 70 and 73 MB. How on earth did we cope. Am I paying extra? No my broadband provider called me and asked if I wanted to take advantage of the updated speed as it was now standard for the package I was on in the area I live. My first response to the call was how much extra will this cost the little voice on the end of the phone said "nothing" Well I said if that is the case I would be silly not to allow you to upgrade my speed. I was still baffled as to why the broadband provider just didn't update. Of course it all comes down to GDPR and data protection. They can't change anything without explicit permission. So in the last few

As those of you that may have read I decided to do something about the litter in the lane I live in may be a week or a week and a half ago. I almost filled one wheelie bin with litter and disregarded or lost items. Yes I took my wheelie bin down the lane. Like an idiot I started picking litter up at the top of the lane and not at the bottom. OMG!!!  that wheelie Bin got heavy. Next time I will work from the bottom of the lane up to the top As you may remember I was baffled by the volume of vodka bottles I found. By the time I collected and disposed of them

Whilst reflecting on what this blog was about, I decided to go back to some of my earlier posts to see exactly what was on my mind. Broadband was one of my top 5 subjects.  I got really excited ten years ago when I almost had a download speed of 5 MB. My how things have changed I am now the proud owner of of a broadband connection of between 70 and 73 MB. How on earth did we cope. Am I paying extra? No my broadband provider called me and asked if I wanted to take advantage of the updated speed as it was now standard for the package I was

The news that the Co-op is putting out feelers for a buyer has come as a shock. We have written to head office asking for details of their intentions This doesn’t stop anyone from writing to us or directly to the Midcounties Co-operative, Co-operative House, Warwick Technology Park, Gallows Hill, Warwick, CV34 6DA setting out why they think the shop should remain open. We believe that the Co-op has a responsibility to keep this community shop open along with the responsibility to provide a post office. It was their decision to take

The news that the Co-op is putting out feelers for a buyer has come as a shock. We have written to head office asking for details of their intentions This doesn’t stop anyone from writing to us or directly to the Midcounties Co-operative, Co-operative House, Warwick Technology Park, Gallows Hill, Warwick, CV34 6DA setting out why they think the shop should remain open. We believe that the Co-op has a responsibility to keep this community shop open along with the responsibility to provide a post office. It was their decision to take over the post office and they should honour this. The shop runs at a profit but it does have shortcomings in terms of space. Pease sign the petition at   http://chng.it/8KrbXPgt