Beckley & Area Community Benefit society Limited (BACBS)

NEWS FROM The Abingdon Arms

Once again, the Abingdon Arms has been hit by COVID fallout. The new surge in cases not only lead people to cancel their Christmas parties, but also some of the staff developed positive lateral flow tests on Boxing Day and had to close the kitchen for a few days. However, they managed to keep the bar open for some hours each day. All the staff who tested COVID positive are fully recovered and back at work.

Rest assured that we are doing all we can to support our tenants through this difficult time, and your patronage of the pub will help of course.

Our tenants are starting the year with high hopes of a better year and have put together some special offers for January to entice you in! Here’s what’s on offer: https://www.theabingdonarms.co.uk/menus/deal-of-the-day

Wood-fired pizza – buy one get one free

Available every Tuesday from 12pm - 8.30pm. Offer valid for dine in only. No à la carte menu on these days.

Burger and beer bargain

Burger plus either a bottled beer or soft bottled drink for only £14.99. Available all day on Wednesdays from 12-9pm. All burgers are served with house chips chunky or skinny, pickles, home-made brioche bun, coleslaw or salad.

Choose from

• Classic beef burger with tomato chutney and cheese

• Chicken, cheese and smoked bacon burger, herb mayo

• Veggie burger, garlic mayo and Monterey Jack cheese

• Fish burger with tartare sauce

The pizza menu will be available 🍕 but no à la carte menu on these days.

Fish Fridays

Lunch and dinner: Main course £13.50, starter and main £16.50.

Veggie options available on the day.

To start

• Long sliced Wye Valley Smoked salmon, capers, lemon and home-made bread

• Deep fried calamari served with garlic mayo and tomato salsa

• Sashimi grade tuna Carpaccio

• Classic prawn, crayfish and smoked salmon cocktail

Main courses

• Fish and chips - fish of the day in beer batter, house chips, peas and tartare sauce

• Fishcakes, house salad, house chips, dill butter sauce

• Smoked haddock, poached egg, mashed potato, wilted spinach, whole-grain mustard sauce

• Pan fried hake, parmentier potatoes, fine beans, capers, beurre noisette

The pizza menu will be available 🍕 but no à la carte menu on these days.

Open share offer– a new initiative from the BACBS Management Committee

(https://bacbs.org/openshareoffer going live shortly)

We will shortly be inviting new and existing shareholders to help fund new projects and to rebuild our reserves via a new open share offer. Our funds have been, and continue to be, depleted by reason of the pandemic and are needed to fund ongoing maintenance and improvement works on the pub building, as well as to enable existing shareholders to redeem (ie withdraw) some of their shares if they wish, as permitted within our Rules.

As a listed building in a conservation area, building works tend to be particularly expensive. Some of the more urgent of these are:

• Wheelchair access to the garden terraces – now completed with some help from grants, outstanding amount needs funding and some further additions planned.

• Refurbishment of the pub’s staff living accommodation – bathroom needs refurbishing, and urgent need for redecoration; particularly important given universal problems with staff recruitment and retention in hospitality

• Replacement of the pub windows with double glazing. Because it’s a listed building we need bespoke wooden window frames in keeping with the original style

• Replacement of decrepit boundary fencing

• Ongoing repairs are always needed.

More than a Pub program

https://bacbs.org/events

We suggest that for the foreseeable future people attending events in The Abingdon Arms consider taking a lateral flow test before they come, particularly if any relevant symptoms.

Pub quiz –7.30 pm on the first Wednesday of the month in the bar at The Abingdon Arms. No need to book – just turn up.

Community Walks – These usually take place on the third Sunday of the month. The January walk, on 16 January, will be led by Chris White, our Paths Warden, starting from the Stanton St John Village Hall at 2 pm and will last about two hours. Dogs on leads are welcome. It may be muddy!

Talks

Sunday January 22, 6.30 pm Jim Gemmill: Surviving as a painter

James Gemmill (jamesgemmill.com) hails from America and now lives in Beckley. His artistic career has been wide-ranging, and he has worked in film (including the well-known The Da Vinci Code, Star Wars, Beauty and the Beast and Mary Poppins Returns), television, and design as well as in the more traditional context of a gallery artist. This will be in the pub (unless rules change) and hopefully on Zoom, check website for latest information, https://bacbs.org/events.

Sunday February 27, 6.30 pm Paul Newton: Public health research, life, and culture in the little-known country of Laos

Paul is Professor of Tropical Medicine, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, and resident of Beckley (https://www.tropicalmedicine.ox.ac.uk/team/paul-newton).

Paul worked in the fascinating country of Laos from 1999 to 2019. Working with hugely welcoming Lao colleagues, they built a research unit within the Ministry of Health of the Lao People's Democratic Republic, or Laos. There was little evidence as to which infectious diseases were present and how they should be diagnosed and managed in the Lao context. Together, Paul and his colleagues collected evidence and trained health workers, building a research unit to inform Lao health policy and implementation. He travelled widely and explored the captivating culture and archaeology of the country,

Paul's talk will range widely, encompassing the public health issues he worked on, what it is like to live and work in Laos, its culture, history and archaeology.

Sunday March 27, 6.30 pm D.A. Holdsworth: Writing political satire

D.A. Holdsworth (a Beckley resident) will talk about his two debut novels, both published during the pandemic and both political satires. The first of them, How to Buy a Planet, was the culmination of a twenty-year journey. Dom will pull highlights from this journey, including the strange coincidence of completing a novel in 2019 about a global pandemic and a global debt crisis. He will also talk about his experience of self-publishing these books on Amazon.

How to Buy a Planet is set in the year 2024. Drowning in debt following the pandemic, the world’s leaders have taken the only logical decision. They’ve sold the planet. Shortlisted for The Selfies Fiction Award 2021. “Builds a palpable sense of cinematic tension” (BookLife Prize Critic’s report) – “Totally mesmerising” (Oxford Daily Information review) – “Echoes of Douglas Adams... Lots of fun” (Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist).

The Zoo of Intelligent Animals is a prequel set in 1977 – year of the Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols, and a spate of unexplained disappearances from across the academic world. This novel satirises authoritarian regimes, while exploring themes of psychopathy, theodicy, and our relationship with the gods.