Village news from Helen Price – 19th Sept 2019 – Part 1

Village news from Helen Price – 19th Sept 2019 – Part 1

Published 15 September 2019

Gardening Guild

The Chairman congratulated everyone on Kings Bromley winning the Best Kept Village competition.
After a very enjoyable visit to Paul Shum’s garden in Yoxall in July, when members were amazed by the variety and quality of his plants on display, the meeting in August welcomed Brian Storer who came to talk about ‘Growing for Showing – Flowers’.
Although Brian grows more vegetables than flowers, he does enjoy growing flowers, especially fuchsias, begonias, dahlias and begonias. He gave a lot of information on taking cuttings, different varieties of flowers and how to display them at Shows.
Members enjoyed a visit on a sunny day to Shugborough in September with Dianne Barre acting as guide to the walled garden, formal gardens and buildings, giving a lot of interesting information on the history of the hall and surroundings.
The next meeting will take place on 21st October, when there will be a talk by Jeff Bates on ‘The Winter Garden’.

Wednesday Club

This is the motto of the Midland Air Ambulance Charity (MAAC) and our speaker in September was MAAC volunteer Sally McMahon.
The Midlands Air Ambulance Charity currently operates and funds 3 air ambulances covering 6 Midlands counties – Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire and the West Midlands. It is one of the busiest air ambulance services operating in the UK and has responded to over 52,000 missions since its formation on May 1st 1991. It has 3 regional airbases at RAF Cosford in Shropshire, Strensham in Worcestershire and Tatenhill in Staffordshire. Between them the 3 air ambulances cover around 5,500 square miles and 6 million people and can reach 90% of the region within 8 minutes.
Sally described each air ambulance as a “mini hospital” or a “mobile A&E”. Each aircraft has a crew of 3 – a pilot and 2 critical care paramedics – or – a pilot, 1 critical care paramedic and a doctor and carries full life support medical equipment.
In addition to the 3 air ambulances MAAC operates 3 rapid response vehicles – deployed when the helicopters are unable to fly – and a critical care car based in Birmingham and the Black Country.
Staffordshire has a call out rate of 24% – second only to the West Midlands with a call out rate of 26%. Current data shows that road traffic accidents account for 40% of all missions; cardiac arrests 24%, falls 17%, sports injuries 8%, hospital transfers 6% and stabbings 5%.
Air ambulance pilots will land on places as diverse as farmland, village greens, main roads and bowling greens. Hazards to landing include wires, hedgerows, properties and people filming the arrival of the air ambulance. Crews work in close cooperation with the other emergency services to achieve the best possible outcome for patients.
It costs £9 million to fund 2,000 missions per year. MAAC receives no Government or National Lottery funding relying on donations from businesses and individuals, its charity shops, open days and the MAAC lottery.
Sally concluded her talk with a short video clip of a young mother from Sutton Coldfield who at 37 weeks pregnant was stabbed multiple times. Miraculously thanks to the crew of the air ambulance and other emergency services both mother and baby survived.

Date of Next Meeting: Wednesday October 2nd at 2.30pm in the Village Hall when our speaker will be from Cats Protection.
Now see part 2 of the report