Helping our neighbours
CAVERSHAM GOOD NEIGHBOURS (CGN) is a local charity offering essential transport to the elderly and disabled in the neighbourhood.
It started life in 1965, when the initial motivation came from a local GP, Dr Beale, and a local priest, Rev Derek Eastman. Dr Beale realised some of his patients were having difficulty in attending his surgery, collecting prescriptions and getting to hospital. In his previous parish, Rev Eastman had experienced an innovative scheme to help housebound people.
The proposals for Caversham Good Neighbours were adopted in 1965 by the Caversham Parochial Church Council. They were for an independent voluntary organisation to provide transport for older or disabled people in Caversham to enable them to attend surgeries, clinics or hospitals, and to assist with the collection of prescriptions. Nearly 60 years on, we are still fulfilling this need…Read more
Daffodils,
That come before the
swallow dares, and take
The winds of March
with beauty – William Shakespeare
BY NOW the daffodils and tulips should be in full bloom, with their promise of longer days and warmer weather. Your March Caversham Bridge is another 20- page edition, looking forward to Easter and highlighting some of the people and activities at the heart of our community.
We have a number of articles featuring local groups in need of volunteers to help in their work. Caversham Good Neighbours (above) is appealing for more drivers, and the Read Easy charity (p11) is seeking support for their work helping adults with literacy difficulties. We also look further afield, with a report on local links with The Gambia (p8), the work of the Reading Refugee Support Group (p9), and…Read more
IN THE NEWS – Caversham Bowls Club
THE ALBERT ROAD-based Caversham Bowls Club raise funds for a selected charity each year. In 2023 they chose The Cowshed, a Wokingham-based charity which provides support to people of any background in their time of personal crisis. They help across Berkshire by providing clothing and essentials for free to those in need. The Club raised a total of £920, which was presented to Rebecca Mole of The Cowshed by Leigh Furlonger, President of the Club…Read more
Outstanding Waitrose Caversham!
WAITROSE CAVERSHAM was named ‘The Grocer’ Magazine’s Store of the Week, for the week ending 15 December, thanks to The Grocer 33 mystery shop.
The magazine conducts nationwide mystery shops, comparing supermarkets within a five-mile radius and, for this particular week, Reading and the local area were in the spotlight. Grocer 33, conducting the research, also incorporates shopper profiling and data from a long-standing analytical organisation.
Last year’s major refurbishment in the layout and lighting, the increased food assortment and the much-needed new refrigeration system, all contributed. Branch Manager Wade Lavery and his ever-helpful team can rightly be proud of their branch…Read more
An update from our editors
THIS MONTH we are considering how we could provide a low-cost way for those running paid-for classes in our area to advertise their services. Currently, our What’s On listing contains predominantly information on clubs, concerts and public services. Space is limited and we do not normally include information about the many classes which run locally, such as pilates, chess, dance and Tai Chi. However, we would like to gauge interest in small, low-cost entries in a listing of these activities with a similar format to our What’s On entries.
If you would like to find out more, we would be pleased to hear from you…Read more
For your bookshelf….
Welcome to ‘Fourbears Reviews’ where we briefly review a couple of titles chosen from our book shop ‘Fourbears Books’ in Caversham.
MY FIRST choice this month is a children’s book by Fiona Barker. We absolutely adore Fiona’s books, which are always beautiful and thoughtful. ‘A Swift Return’ is about the delicacy of nature as Aria and Yusuf, two very different children, work together to save a bird which has lost its way. A simple story beautifully illustrated, with the English text accompanied by Arabic text. It helps remind us to look above the streetlights and houses at the wonderful nature all around…Read more
That Little Tent of Blue: Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol
THE NEWS THIS year of the long-awaited sale of Reading’s former jail brings to mind one of its more famous inhabitants, Oscar Wilde, imprisoned between 1895 and 1897. This is his most famous connection with the local area, but not the only one. Only a couple of years earlier, Wilde had spent time in Goring, writing his play An Ideal Husband. Anyone familiar with the local area will find that link obvious from the character list, which includes the Earl of Caversham, Viscount Goring, Lady Chiltern, and the Countess of Basildon, among others – continuing Wilde’s practice of naming characters after locations, as in Lady Windermere’s Fan…Read more
Happy Wanderer searches for THE GOLDEN KEY
AS SO OFTEN happens, when looking for one piece of information or one image, something completely different takes over my attention. Whilst looking for a picture of a building along the Kennet and Avon Canal, I came across this photo of a pub. According to the caption, its location was unknown, but since I’ve been wandering around Caversham for the last 40 years, I knew exactly where it had been taken.
In the past I’d heard the story that the golden…Read more
FROM CAVERSHAM TO THE GAMBIA
Alan and Jane Tuvey of Caversham Heights could not have imagined what would result from a holiday to The Gambia in 2022, and the depth of the connection they have established there, as Alan explains here.
FRIENDS HAD encouraged us to seek out a small church they had found in The Gambia during a visit a few years previously. So we duly contacted the pastor and, on Palm Sunday 2022, joined in a typically lively African-style service at the church.
The pastor told us of the vision of local Christians for the church across their country. They were passionate, he said, about reaching out to the remote communities and villages to the north of the capital, Banjul. One of their key needs was and is access to clean drinking water, as the ‘utility water’ supplied by the authorities is contaminated, causing illnesses among people who drink it…Read more
Cookery book raises £4000 for Military Charities
‘THE KUKRI Kitchen Cook Book’ arose as a result of the many parties and social gatherings shared by local Gurkha ladies and their teachers, most of whom live in Caversham and surrounding areas. We got used to their delicious dishes and, gradually, they got used to ours. Marie Rogers, one of the teachers, suggested a cookery book with a mixture of recipes from Nepal and Caversham might be a good idea. This was greeted with great enthusiasm. It was decided that the book would be published and sold to raise money for the Gurkha Welfare Trust and SSAFA, the Armed Forces Charity…Read more
Reading has a proud history of welcoming displaced people…
One of the causes supported by former Mayor of Reading, Bet Tickner, was Reading Refugee Support Group, which works to help refugees rebuild their lives here in Berkshire. We thought it would be opportune to highlight their work this month.
THE READING Refugee Support Group was set up in 1994 following a Refugee Conference organised to look at the problems refugees were facing locally, and to find ways they could be helped. It was formed as a refugee-led organisation with the aim of helping refugees living locally. Reading has a proud history of welcoming displaced people, dating back to 1947, and hosting orphan refugees from Dusseldorf (now Reading’s twinned town in Germany)…Read more
LET’S GET MARCH IN
MARCH HAS to be a favourite month for garden enthusiasts. I am not certain I should call myself a ‘garden enthusiast’ when I have spent most of the winter moaning and groaning about all the rain and the state of my garden… and doing nothing. So now is surely the time to get going…Read more
Easter Fun in the Gardens
COME ALONG to Caversham Court on Saturday 30 March, between 14:00 and 16:00 for an Easter Egg Trail around the gardens. Explore the hidden corners of the gardens as you complete an Easter Egg Quiz on a nature theme, hosted by The Friends of Caversham Court Gardens (FCCG). The gardens should be looking lovely with spring bulbs and early colour in the borders. All young competitors will win an Easter Egg prize or a non-dairy treat. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Entry is free, but donations to FCCG would be appreciated. The Tea Kiosk will be open for refreshments all afternoon…Read more
Reading Bach Choir
FOLLOWING A popular Come and Sing with us in January, you are invited to visit Goring for the next Reading Bach Choir concert. We will perform Stabat Mater, by Dvorak, in its original form for choir and piano accompaniment. Directed by Daniel Mahoney, we are delighted to have our Assistant Musical Director, Nick Shaw on the piano. We will also be welcoming four young soloists from the Genesis Sixteen programme – they are all outstanding singers on the cusp of their careers…Read more
Vital steps to reading
READING IS a basic requirement of everyday life and a skill many of us take for granted. Yet there are 2.4 million adults in England alone who can barely read or cannot read at all. In turn, people who struggle with reading may also struggle with writing and have quite limited spoken vocabulary. Learning to read as an adult can be life changing. The benefits can extend beyond the individual and enable families to break the inter-generational cycle of literacy difficulties.
Read Easy is a charity, established in 2011, which aims to tackle this problem…Read more
MY MUSIC – A MUSIC MAN
I HAVE BEEN a Reading Football Club follower for years. I am fairly certain I can recall travelling to their old ground at Elm Park via a tram. Maybe that is fantasy on my part, but I certainly remember going down the Oxford Road in a trolley bus. We used to cycle there as well, leaving our bikes in someone’s yard for a small fee.
Another of my great football memories is when the Reading Spring Gardens Brass Band provided a musical background at home matches…Read more
Gentle Exercise With Friends
CAVERSHAM SHORT MAT Bowls Club was founded about 35 years ago by a couple from Southcote who needed a hobby to keep them active. They chose to start a short mat bowls club, which is a smaller but similar version of lawn or indoor bowls. Short Mat was first played on the pub floors in Ireland and then spread to the UK.
It is played on a green or blue carpet some 35, 40 or 45 feet long and 6 feet wide. The aim of the game is to roll a bowls ‘wood’ until it either touches or hits a heavy, but smaller yellow ball known as the ‘jack’ in order to score points. But there is a twist; to do this the player has to avoid a foot wide wooden barrier placed in the centre of the mat. Most of the remaining rules are the same as those for ordinary bowls…Read more
THE LOCAL SCENE – The Collective
MY WIFE and I were walking to Caversham Court one day and passed the old shop on the corner of Church Road and St Anne’s Road that had recently closed. A group of women were wielding paint rollers and feverishly painting walls, so we stopped and asked what the new premises would be. They enthusiastically described a café they were opening called ‘The Collective’. Today it is well established as a very popular meeting place – good coffee, great food, and a stylish and welcoming interior.
Soon after the café opened, we had our first lockdown, which could have been a disaster for a new business. But The Collective adapted to the covid restrictions with a take-away service…Read more