The Abingdon Peace Group were in the town centre on Saturday to congratulate ICAN on winning the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. The group ICAN convinced 122 nations to sign a UN treaty banning nuclear weapons.
ICAN, the international campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons, is an international coalition of groups, including survivors from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013.
It was snowing at 7am. The weather forecast had predicted snow but I never expect snow to really happen.
Here is Belsky’s mother and child in the snow. Elsewhere there were lots of real parents out with their children, playing snowballs and with sledges.
The paths and roads got very slippery as the snow continued to fall. Cars and even buses could not always get traction. Walking sticks and ski sticks looked very sensible.
The world had turned black and white with just a few touches of colour.
At Trinity, there were less people than usual. Geoff Caudle from Drayton led the service. He did well to get there.
After church I began to see snowmen. There were two next to Abingdon Baptist Church.
Down in the Abbey Meadows somebody had sculpted a mermaid from the snow.
On another bench sat a snowman.
The snow stopped for the first time at 2 pm.
For the third Saturday in a row Abingdon Market Place was full of activity. Not only was there a Craft Market, there was also a stall with British Canoeing, and a stall with the Abingdon Peace Group (more tomorrow about their news).
Local craftmakers were selling handmade crafts just in time for Christmas.
British Canoeing were also there in force to support the Kingfisher Canoe Club who need a place to store their canoes near the river. They were asking people to sign a petition supporting their proposal “The only suitable site available is Rye Meadow, for which planning has been approved. However there are some legal restrictions on the site. We are advised by our legal team these can be resolved, but require the council to recognise that there is a commonly used legal solution.”
The petition can also be signed online.
There is a log fire at the Old Anchor Inn, by the River Thames in Abingdon. Over the fireplace mantel are the words “DO NOT TOUCH The fire”.
As a child, one task I was sometimes allowed to undertake was to clear the grate of the previous night’s ashes, and then start the next day’s fire. This would either entail using white fire lighters, or the gas poker under a pile of coal.
On a number of occasions I remember watching as adults held a thin sheet of newspaper in front of the fireplace to draw up the flames. This was a more risky process, and on a couple of occasions I saw the flaming newspaper being sucked up the chimney. It could have caused a chimney fire but didn’t. We learned from our elders that fire had to be treated with respect.