Spelthorne litter pickers get King's Award for Voluntary Service
A Surrey litter picking group has been presented with an "MBE for charities" to mark its work to keep the community clean.Spelthorne Litter Pickers was formed in 2020 with the aim of keeping the borough clean through volunteer events across the region.The group has now been honoured with the King's Award for Voluntary Service, the highest award given to volunteer groups in the UK.Shirley Lunn, co-founder of the group, said receiving the award was "really special" and had spurred them on to continue their work.
She added: "The group has really made a difference. I think everyone is really delighted that we have been recognised even though what we do is not glamorous."Receiving the award was absolutely amazing. It was a really big achievement and everybody feels it."
Formed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ms Lunn added that the group now includes volunteers ranging from five years old to 85.The group carries out a monthly litter pick across the area as well as encouraging volunteers to do their own work in their own time.She added that, since forming, the group has led efforts to clean up Spelthorne, including getting a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) for the area to tackle littered nitrous oxide canisters.Litter pickers from the group collected the award at a ceremony at Spelthorne Borough Council on Tuesday, 15 April.The award was first created in 2002 as the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service to celebrate the Golden Jubilee.The King's Award is equivalent to an MBE for charities.His Majesty's Lord Lieutenant of Surrey Michael More-Molyneux, who presented the award, said: "It was a pleasure to present this award to the Spelthorne Litter Pickers."They carry out fantastic voluntary work in Spelthorne and fully deserve our thanks and the recognition that comes with this award."
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Glasgow Times
14 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
'Local legend' Glasgow road sweeper retires after 43 years
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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
The moment I knew: as I signed the waiver for his emergency brain surgery, I felt pure devotion
In 2022, I was going through motions. I was burned out after shepherding two restaurants through Melbourne's Covid lockdowns and emotionally burned to the ground by a failed marriage. It had been a big few years; I had sworn off love and was taking life slowly. Despite all this, in late spring I found myself chatting online with a charming gardener-cum-physicist called Scott. A few weeks later, our first phone call lasted until the sun came up. I had been captivated by his boundless capacity for a chat but I didn't hear from him for a few weeks after that. I wondered if it was because I'd asked him on more than one occasion to pipe down so I could contribute to the conversation, or if my cynical side had made an unflattering appearance in my wine haze. But no love was lost, Scott reappeared a few weeks later and we recommenced our correspondence with vigour. On New Year's Day 2023 I invited him over. It was another all-nighter of nonstop chatting and we talked at length about the dire state of my garden. A couple of weeks later he showed up completely unannounced, secateurs in hand, ready to tackle it. What I've learned about Scott since is that his love language is very much 'acts of service'. He is so happy to help anyone with their annoying tasks; he just loves being helpful. But of course my first encounter with his knight-in-shining-armour routine made me feel very special indeed. Unfortunately, in my shame, I'd already paid someone to get my yard in shape (not that I admitted the outsourcing to him). Impressed by the work I hadn't done and hellbent on making himself useful, Scott decided he'd clean out the gutters. We got up on the roof and worked together – Scott doing the dirty work and me climbing up and down the ladder with the bucket. Sharing this mundane task was an unexpected bonding experience. We'd later talk about how seen and safe we felt in each other's company that day. It's gone down in the annals of our relationship as 'Gutter Day'. He moved in about six months later. I couldn't believe myself, the dainty goth courting a gruff tradesman. I began working at a bar and we continued to livestream our thoughts via text while he was at home and I flirted with strangers and upsold wanky wines. Just a few weeks later, in late June, I came home to find Scott sleeping. We'd always chat over a nightcap together before retiring, so this was unusual. But he'd been working hard so I didn't worry too much until the following day. When he was still drowsy the next evening, something felt off. I called our neighbour Michelle, an emergency nurse, who suggested we go to hospital. By the time we arrived Scott was struggling to string a sentence together and was whisked away within moments of being triaged. When they wheeled him back post-MRI, he was soft, tired and looking so vulnerable. Then the news came that Scott had a 1.1cm subarachnoid aneurysm on his brain that had been haemorrhaging for maybe 24 hours. I went as white as a sheet but it quickly became apparent that I was going to have to save my emotional breakdown for later, step up, contact his family (whom I'd never met) and make some extremely high-stakes decisions about his treatment path. It was then and there, as I was confronted with the idea that I might lose him, that I knew I could not be without him. As I nervously signed the waiver, I felt pure devotion. Scott's surgery went well but he was placed in an induced coma for a few days. When he came to he had zero filter. That rawness could have revealed a darker side but instead I got confirmation that even at his most uncensored, Scott is kind and caring to the core. One of his most vivid hallucinations, which he told me about in detail, involved him spending the entire night helping the nurses catch up on their paperwork. Scott came home two months later and, while his recovery wasn't without its frustrations and challenges, the mere thought of being anywhere else didn't cross my mind. Of course there were days I could have slept in the garden in a tent just to get a break from his incessant chatting but I knew I would never, ever leave him. He was my guy, no matter how many times I had to repeat myself, or listen to him repeat himself! Two years on, Scott has pretty much fully recovered and is still the same gorgeous dork I fell in love with. We spend our days pottering in the garden, or at the stove, or by the fire on cold nights. The dark days seem like another life but they weren't – they were just the beginning of ours. Do you have a romantic realisation you'd like to share? From quiet domestic scenes to dramatic revelations, Guardian Australia wants to hear about the moment you knew you were in love. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian. Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Eating dinner at 10pm is nothing short of pyschopathic
Almost everything about Covid was bad, obviously. The virus itself, the pain it inflicted across the world, the restrictions on individual liberty, and the banging of pots with wooden spoons on our doorsteps every Thursday evening (astonishing to think this is the country that came up with Magna Carta, and yet over 800 years later we'd regressed to the point where we decided to show our appreciation by behaving like deranged toddlers with a set of kitchen equipment). On the other hand, it shifted our body clocks forward a bit, did it not? It did for me, anyway. Pre-Covid, an 8pm table booking was no problem. Splendid, in fact. Dinner out with friends, nothing could be lovelier. Post-Covid, it seemed mad. Practically wanton. Be out at that time, away from my home? Only sitting down for dinner at 8pm? What is this, Spain? Now, if I'm meeting pals for supper, I generally try to get away with a 7.30 booking, although ideally 7pm. That allows plenty of time for chit-chat but means we can still be in bed by 10. If friends are coming over for dinner, I often say to them airily 'any time from 6.30' in the hope this means I might be tucked up with my book even earlier. At any sign of lingering over the coffee and bag of Minstrels, I start loading the dishwasher. It's enormously relaxed, an evening with me. Last November, while having dinner with friends in New York – 'the city that never sleeps' – I practically fell asleep at the table because our reservation was for 9pm (although I suspect jet lag and the three margaritas before dinner didn't help matters much). But a friend across the pond says there's been a more general shift to earlier eating even there. And yet there remain among us a good number of psychopaths who want to eat at 10.30pm, or even later. I'm not referring to our southern European friends; various London restaurants have recently announced that they're opening reservation slots for later tables. Mountain, a Soho restaurant where I once tried tripe (not for me), is now offering punters the chance of a slot at 10.30pm. Tomos Parry, the co-founder and chef of Brat, a very trendy Shoreditch restaurant, says he's noticed late-night diners creeping back. If you fancy a plate of extremely spicy noodles, you can book a table at Speedboat Bar, an excellent Thai restaurant also in Soho, until 12.30am on Friday and Saturday nights. This has been hailed as a 'late-night dining revolution', which I don't remember Marx banging on about much. Restaurateurs are, naturally, delighted. Times are hard, getting punters in to eat is challenging, especially when everyone's on the fat jabs, so if they can keep throwing out plates until the wee hours for those who do want to eat, so much the better. Jeremy King, restaurant impresario, has recently unveiled a new late-night menu at his new-ish joints, The Park and Arlington. Book a table after 9.45pm and you get 25 per cent off. Notably, these are all fairly central London restaurants, and I wonder how many of their late-night clientele live reasonably close. Or at least only one zone away. Well-heeled sorts who don't baulk at the price of fillet steak and can totter home or hail a black cab for a fare under a tenner. Because if you book a table at 10.30pm, you're not going to be heading home much before midnight. The trains have stopped running back to my parts by then. There's the odd night bus if I don't mind two hours crawling southwards, or it'll be a £50 Uber. Bed by 1am, maybe, which isn't hugely practical if you have to work for a living, or have small children, or a small and unruly terrier who demands his first outing to the park at 6am. That's to say nothing of the potential digestion issues. I don't wish to be indelicate, but can one get a good night's kip if you hit the pillow with a stomach full of tripe after midnight? As Pepys himself once surmised: 'I did eat very late at night, which I perceive makes me feel heavy and sleepy.' Quite. Experts quoted in health articles constantly extol the health benefits of intermittent fasting, or restricting one's eating to an eight- or 10-hour window. But good luck with that if you're swallowing your last mouthful of crispy egg noodles after Cinderella's curfew. No more for you until at least lunchtime the following day. Many years ago, one late night as a teenager, I sat across a table from a boy I had a crush on in a restaurant called Vingt-Quatre on the Fulham Road. It had opened in 1995, London's first 24-hour restaurant, and the novelty was thrilling. The novelty of sitting near a boy, I mean, although the restaurant was pretty thrilling too. We shared a burger and the bill came with a small pot of Smarties, which seemed the height of ironic decadence. He paid and afterwards walked me back through the dark streets of Chelsea to put me on the N137 home to Stockwell, so it was a relatively chaste evening. Not the sort of thing that gets poets excited. But it felt practically Byronic to me – the late night, the Smarties, the slow meander to the Sloane Street bus stop. I swooned about it for months once safely back at boarding school. I understand it, in other words. I understand that late-night dining can be exciting, and romantic, possibly even a little dangerous if your alarm is going off soon. But my appetite for danger must have waned in the intervening 23 years because dicey behaviour these days means going to sleep after 11pm. Perhaps this is more to do with age than Covid. Or both. Still, if restaurants are increasingly catering for daredevils who wish to risk indigestion and trapped wind, those of us who prefer 7pm tables may stand more of a chance. Or maybe even 6.30pm. Could you make 6.30?
