As January departs and we enter into February there will no doubt be a few people who are looking forward to their first drink of year having had a dry January.. And then there is Lent if your New Year resolutions failed miserably – like mine did!
We seemed to have had a busy January – the highlights being a great turnout on 4th to help remove the Christmas Trees followed Betty Hicks’ Honorary Citizen Award on 11th January which was attended by over a 100 invited guests. The next Town occasions of import were the ECN/CNTC jointly-hosted event at the Town Hall on Friday 23rd when we welcomed David Cameron as the guest speaker and this was attended by about 150 business people from Chippy and the close surrounds immediately followed the next day by the Chippy Club/Organisation day in the Town Hall where it seemed that every ‘club’ from the Fire Brigade to the Model Aero Club was represented – goes to show that there is a lot to do in Chippy!
The next major town events are:
Sports Awards – Feb 20th
The Mayors Ball on April 18th – all proceeds are going towards the Chippy Skate Park so I hope that the Town will really support this event – tickets will be on sale from the Guildhall from the 9th February – cost is £45 a head which will include a glass of fizz on arrival, a 4 course dinner and dancing to Blue Monday (the new name for the CNS Allstars) – there will be a raffle and Tombola with hopefully some great prizes to be announced later – and the ticket price includes a lucky draw for a case of wine as well – so excellent value for money and all for a very good cause. Last year we raised over £3000 for charity – this year charity begins at home and I would love to hit £4000…. That’s the target. I remind you the skate park will cost a minimum of £56000 – some of which we will obtain external funding for but the more the Town raises the better.
Apart from fundraising for the Skate Park – we also have the Police Station project and anyone interested in helping a working group on this please contact me – CNTC don’t have the necessary expertise on tap for this so without help from the Town this will go in the too-hard basket.
On May 7th (apart from electing a new government and district councillor) Chippy will be electing a new Town Council – I know that some of our ‘senior’ councillors will be standing down this year after having given years of stalwart service so we need to have some new faces – we need 16 councillors in total so anyone interested in standing please contact the Town Clerk.
And finally – I am writing this at about 0600 hrs on Friday 30th Jan – woke up early expecting to see a full covering of snow – I have heard that there are some empty grit bins around – if you know on any please contact the Guildhall and we will arrange for them to be refilled.
Have a great February.
Mike Tysoe
Mayor
