JOIN YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH
Neighbourhood Watch, an active partnership between residents who want to make their communities safer, the Police and the Council, is flourishing in Ickenham. Many roads have their own voluntary organisation consisting of a Coordinator, Road Stewards and residents, working together to prevent crime, improve security and increase vigilance. This simple arrangement, backed up by effective communication, means policing is potentially strengthened many-fold at little or no additional cost; and people feel safer in their own community.
If you live in Ickenham and are not already involved, we invite you to do so. We are particularly keen to get more volunteers in the Glebe estate and Ickenham Park. The task isn’t onerous or time consuming – it basically involves keeping a friendly eye on your road, distributing a monthly newsletter and, if possible, attending a quarterly meeting of Road Coordinators.
To find out more, visit the NHW office in Ruislip police Station on any Friday morning, or contact Alan Noad (636736) or Diana May (234813), Chairman and Secretary respectively of the Ickenham NHW group. The NHW office can also arrange for NHW signs to be erected in your area.
AFN
FROM ROMANIA TO THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
(AND ICKENHAM VILLAGE HALL!)
This year, the popular WEA Lecture Supper Evening will take place on Saturday 16th November at 6.30pm in the Village Hall. The speaker is world famous opera singer Nelly Miricioiu, who was born in Romania, where she grew up under the Ceausescu dictatorship and spent time in prison, before she fled the communist regime in 1981. Here in Britain her opera career really took off; and she has since sung at all of the world’s major opera houses. More information at www.nellymiricioiu.com.
Tickets for the event cost just £10, to include a buffet supper with wine. Contact Caroline Field on 01923 824922 or Marysia Swanson on 01895 472993.
DONATION
This month, receipt is acknowledged, with grateful thanks, for the donation from:
Anon via the Editor.
Items for the December edition of ICN should be with the team by 12 noon on 13th November. Remember there is no separate January issue of ICN, so use the December one to inform us of any events early in the New Year you would like us to promote.
FROM ST GILES’ CLERGY
I know I have already left, but I hadn’t at the time of writing this! Elsewhere in this edition, you’ll find an article by Alan, our intrepid news hound, about my life before Ickenham with some reflections on our time here. But this is my opportunity for a final message here.
What gives us strength in life? Ickenham is a place where we value a good education, attractive surroundings, family life, comfortable homes, good health, savings and working hard. In many ways, we look to these for strength and security in life. But as your outgoing Rector, I want to encourage you to ‘be strong in the Lord’ (a quote from the concluding section of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Christians in Ephesus). It’s the last thing he said to them, and it’s the final thing I want to say to you.
One of the things about Ickenham that I have really enjoyed is the strong community spirit. And countless times over the last ten years, residents of Ickenham have commented on this, citing it as a reason for enjoying life here. It is a very commendable quality; something that can take years to cultivate, and therefore it should be prized and protected. But even this highly desirable aspect of life is not the same as finding our strength in God. It is true that God has created humanity to live together in inter-dependence, and so a strong community is a godly trait, but He also made us to be dependent on Him, and we are only truly fulfilled when we live in a good relationship with God as well as one another.
If we are tempted to find our strength from any of these other good things and try and live independently of God - the only true source of strength - our full development as God’s children will be inhibited. So, my final message to the people of Ickenham is, ‘be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power’. Find your strength first and foremost in the Lord, and then, from that foundation, pursue all that’s good in life and builds up our common life together. It’s ‘both... and’ rather than ‘either... or’! Make sure nothing is a substitute for finding your strength in God, your loving heavenly Father. Attend to your relationship with God - He sent Jesus to make that possible.
May God strengthen you as you look to Him in the future.
Yours in Christ
Adrian
