The Art Society had it's first meeting of the season on Friday the 13th of October. In spite of the date all went well, exceptionally so in fact. We met at our new venue The Chaplaincy of Sedbergh School. We are enormously grateful to the School for allowing us to meet there and enjoy the convenience of a central location.
  Our speaker on this occasion was an artist from Wray near Hornby, David Hartnup. We knew we were going to enjoy the evening and learn something as David had been to us before to speak about the war artists. This time however brought something rather different, 'Victorian Paintings and the stories behind them.'
  We were treated to a series of slides of paintings by Holman Hunt, Millaise, Ruskin, and Ford Maddox-Brown and a few lesser known artists. We learned that Holman Hunt painted three 'Light of the World' . One of which is in Oxford. The detail and intricacy of some of the paintings belies belief and the allegory woven into the superficial painting had passed me by . I had thought of Victorian paintings as rather over detailed and sentimental. In future I shall give more respect and thought to the subject.
  Our next meeting, at the same venue, on Friday November 10th is to be 'Considering Colour---Yours and Mine' . The speaker will be Carole Hamby. Some of you will know Carole as the power behind the beginning of 'Windows on Art ' in Kendal and perhaps you have visited her studio at Farfield Mill. If you would like to join us you would be most welcome. R.A.G.

  I don't often get the opportunity to have the last word, but thanks to the editors for that privilege last month!
  For some years I have campaigned for our locally elected representatives on public bodies to give an account of what they are doing to represent our views.  I am pleased to see that each month more of those we have elected are using Lookaround to give account of themselves.  Thank you Tim Farron MP, Councillor Craig Stephenson, and now also Councillor Kevin Lancaster for your contributions.  It is good too to read the different shades of opinion of our councillors who hail from two different political parties.  Keep up the good work keeping us informed.  Sadly there is one body which doesn't tell us what it is doing.  I find it extraordinary that Sedbergh Parish Council likes to keep us all in the dark and operate behind a veil of secrecy.  Why doesn't the Parish Council have a column in Lookaround I wonder?  Have they something to hide?  Although I live in Sedbergh it was interesting to read the Dent Parish Council report in the last issue.  If Dent can do it, so can Sedbergh; perhaps they are reporting elsewhere in this Lookaround.  I do hope so.
  South Lakeland District Council gives us their "Recycling News" which too is interesting to read, even if it isn't all that helpful.  Last month we were encouraged to choose products which are not over-packaged (their words) when we go shopping.  Often there is no choice, and often when we get home and start to open what we have bought we find there is even more packaging than we first thought.  I wonder what annoys you most about present day packaging.  We used to get our pills like aspirins in little reusable containers, open the lid, take out the tablets, put the top back on the bottle and put away for the next time.  And when you had emptied the bottle it could be returned to the chemist for re-use or easily disposed of.  Now they are in a cardboard box, possibly in shrink wrapped plastic.  When you eventually get inside the box there is a leaflet to tell you how to take your tablet which you have to press out of a foil strip on the back of a plastic sheet.  What about your toothpaste?  When you get the tube out of the box and open the top to squeeze out the paste on the toothbrush, yes there is a little bit of foil to be removed.
  One recyclable I have a lot of is plastic bottles; milk, cola, washing up liquid etc.  Most councils pick them up in their equivalent of our blue boxes but not SLDC who can only promise us yet another skip at Joss Lane (even though that in itself is an improvement of sorts).
  Last month I put forward the viewpoint that the dozen or so skips already at Joss Lane are an eyesore and inappropriately placed; we don't want even more of them.  Joss Lane car park will have more bins than cars before long.  No doubt they all have season tickets to park there!  I'm not sure whether to call my one man campaign "Ban the Bins" or "Tidy the Town".
  A more appropriate place for our skips would be the old cattle market site; but that's another story.  I see Spar have it and greengrocer Martin Powell is pleased that the site is to be a convenience store and not a supermarket.  Tell me, what is the difference?  But seemingly there is more to it than that.  Is it not also to be a distribution centre - or have I misunderstood the situation?  Kevin Lancaster seems to have his finger on the pulse; nothing can be done without planning approval, so it is up to us all to keep an eye on the situation - planning notices on site and in the press.  As Kevin rightly says any development which increases the number of large, heavy lorries using our narrow winding and undulating road to the M6, particularly at Lincoln's Inn Bridge (and I add to that Black Horse Hill) is unacceptable.  Already we have enough such vehicles going to Pratts at Birks Mill where a large extension of the property is presently being built.
  I like to confine my remarks to views specific to Sedbergh, so feel Europe to be outside my remit.  However Sedbergh is as much a part of Europe as it is of South Lakeland and of Cumbria.  I've been bemused and saddened by the bickering correspondence in recent issues of Lookaround.  We are part of Europe, we are in the EEC and likely always to be so.  Let's look forward and make the most of it and get all we can out of it.  Let's adopt the Euro so that I can spend my holiday money in Sedbergh as well as in Zrece - and stop the bankers making a profit every time we, and our businesses, go abroad, or import or export anything.
  A recent article in the Sunday Express printed a glowing picture of Sedbergh, the Book Town, as a place to visit.  Particularly recommended was the Orange Skies music book shop which closed down within days of the article being published.  The only place to shop on Back Lane has transferred to Main Street and now there is nowhere to shop on Back Lane.  The shop on the corner of New Street has been in limbo for the past few weeks, closed, restocked and unopened.  The Post Horn is still to "reopen soon".  Are we deluding ourselves about the success of the Book Town and the economy of Sedbergh in general, I wonder?
  Never mind Christmas is coming - and so is the gas man to dig up the rest of Main Street.  Happy Days! N Hastle.