News in Brief

PCC Spring Bingo

The PCC Spring Bingo was attended by 74 eager players and raised £486 for Church funds.  

Playgroup

Next time you walk past the School take a look at the fantastic painted playground, paid for by recent fund raising events.

Playing outside is now even more fun for the children, who reach surprisingly high speeds in their ride-on toys on the newly painted road! 

Warmington Social Club

Annual membership is £4 and £1 for Senior Citizens. Open from 7pm to 11pm every day and Saturday and Sunday lunchtimes. Bingo three nights a week. 

Brownies and Guides

Nassington Brownies meet every Monday from 5.30pm to 6.45pm in Nassington Village Hall. The Guides meet from 7pm to 8.30pm on the same night. These are one of the nearest groups to Warmington. 

Children's Page

Q: What do you get if you cross an ocean with a robber?

A: A crime wave!

Warmington Pocket Parks

On Saturday 16 March a working party attended the Big Green Pocket park for a Spring tidy-up and to locate 30-plus plants which had been over-wintered in small containers plus a pair of large Salix.

Some mowing of the paths was carried out, though in general access had been good throughout the winter. The willow "igloo" had de-woven itself and grown since last season, and this was firmly disciplined for 2002 ready for exploration by children or very small adults. 

Duties were shared by the team pictured right, but a special thank you goes to Katie Stewart for providing the refreshments.

Left to right, John Atkinson, Mike Wesson, Michael Stewart, Mike Dixon, Ken Hodges, Mary Hodges, Derek Rowell, Katie Stewart and Tim Reed.

The Sky at Night

The Spring constellations of Leo the Lion, with its bright star Regulus (the Royal Star) and Virgo with Spica "the ear of corn" are prominent in the early evening sky, looking East. Regulus is a blue-white star twice the size of our Sun and with 120 times the luminosity. Virgo covers a huge area of the sky and the Virgo clusters of galaxies contains several thousand collections of stars the size of our own Milky Way.

To travel from end to end of one of these galaxies at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second or 7 times round the earth) would take more than 100,000 years.  The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn are still with us but, as summer sets in, will disappear into the evening twilight until late Autumn.

I have been looking at these two splendid worlds through my back garden telescope and have watched some shadow transits of Jupiter's moons and have noted the strong tawny colour of its North equatorial belt. I have seen the Giant Red Spot only about three times. It is pale coloured this year and is a permanent atmospheric storm bigger than the earth. Saturn's rings have been fairly wide open and it is usually possible to glimpse tow or three of its moons, including giant Titan which may contain the building blocks for life.

John Brown