If the preservation of Hedgehogs or the elimination of Rats is of interest to you you may like to make a note in your diary. Following the decision of the Chandler’s Ford and Hiltingbury Local Area Committee meeting to refer the motions about Rats and Hedgehogs to the Eastleigh Borough Council Cabinet for resolution you may be interested to know that the public can attend and speak at these council meetings.
The Cabinet meeting is on Thursday 14th June at 18:30 at Eastleigh House. The public can speak to any item on the agenda when that item is reached. Members of the public can also speak on any item not on the agenda at the start of the meeting provided they’ve let the attendant officer know they wish to speak before the meeting starts. The Hedgehogs and Rats are to be Item 7 on the revised agenda. Apparently Cabinet meetings are usually ‘very brisk’ and Item 7 should be reached quite quickly.
It was a ‘fun and interesting evening’ said Mary Peterson describing the NMDCA Wine and Cheese evening. It was a slightly competitive test of peoples’ knowledge and palettes as six different wines were presented for tasting. There were three reds and three whites comprising three price bands of cheap, middle of the road and expensive. The test being to see if the two or three person teams could correctly choose which wine was which and to guess the country of origin. The blind tasting was achieved by cloaking the bottles in socks, with a colour coding system on the neck employing coloured insulating tape.
In addition to the wines, there was a challenge to identify six different cheeses laid out on colour coded plates. Also a great spread of food was provided by Doreen and Gillian to counteract the effects of a busy evening imbibing. The different wines were ‘paced’ throughout the evening and along with the chat and nibbling no one had to be carried home! When the scores for the wines and the cheeses were totted up it was a close run thing but Phil Heller and his wife Bernice took home the prize.
One of the things that everybody took home though, was that the price of the wine does not necessarily define its drinkability and that many people preferred the cheapest of the wines to the more expensive ones. Both the red and the white at just over £3 a bottle seemed to prove the most popular before the price was known and even more popular when it was revealed. Aldi and Asda being the suppliers of these wines.
For those of you who read through the article in the last issue of the Miller’s Tale you may be forgiven for thinking I ended the piece on a rather downbeat note.
