Two fire engines were called at about 8:30 this morning to put out a fire in St Helen’s Mews – just up the road from us.
(Thanks to E for sending me the picture.)
Fire
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Monthly Archives: December 2010
South Abingdon Lights 2010
Back in Abingdon and I took a tour of South Abingdon to look at some of the Christmas Lights. I did not get round to everywhere by a long way and will also look round North Abingdon for the blog fairly soon.
To my mind this was the best neighbourhood display – four houses that coordinated well. The rest of the road was also well lit up in parts.
Possibly the most flamboyant lights so far.
I took about twenty pictures on the tour, put the results on the computer, and this looked the best picture to me.
More Pix of St Nics – our twin town
There is an Abingdonstraat in Sint Niklaas, just as there is Sint Niklaas Close in Abingdon.
Sint Niklaas is about twice as big as Abingdon and is expanding with new fairly large estates planned round the outtskirts of town. There is a rule that 20% of the housing in new estates need to be for social housing. That is similar to the Vale.
The big industry in this area was cloth making. Now no more. The town museum has been built alongside an old textile factory, so this factory with dummys instead of work people is entered from the town museum.
In the Oxfam tent at the Christmas Market a group of middle aged women called The Bitchin’ Bitches – or something similar – provided some interesting entertainment. They were very funny to watch , and we were told afterwards we had missed a lot of the jokes as it was the language.
There is a group in Sint Niklaas called ‘Art in The Town’ who pay subscriptions and every second year have enough to buy a new work of art for the town streets. They argued that not enough people went to the art galleries so they would take art to the people. The Vale also asks developers to finance new art with most new developments.
We were told that this is the best beer in the world. Westbleteren is produced by monks and they only sell it at the gate if you pre-order, and they only allow a maximum of a couple of crates per customer. One of our hosts drives for an hour and a half to get a couple of crates.
Sint Niklaas Twin Conference
In Sint Niklaas the yearly twin town conference is taking place this year. That is where the grouping of five twinned towns: Abingdon, Colmar (France), Lucca (Italy), Sint Niklaas (Belgium), and Schongau (Germany) all send delegates to discuss a theme important for the EU – who help fund the twin town conference.
Michael Matthews who has been involved in twinning since the 1967, and Brian Read, also on the Abingdon and District twinning committee, were interviewed about the conference for regional Belgium television…
The Sint Niklaas 2010 conference topic was about Child Poverty.
Each town presented a paper. Then delegates visited a Red Cross Centre for refugees seeking asylum in Sint Niklaas. Only 1 out of 4 people going through the strict Belgium process become a refugee. Others are just let out on the street and have to find their own way back to their own country or try elsewhere…
Britain, is the only country that does not belong to the same asylum checking process as the rest of Europe where fingerprints and the checking process is shared.