On February 14th, St Valentine’s day,  the clergy and congregation of St. Lawrence’s church, Rode, are launching the Heart of Rode Appeal to ensure that St Lawrence’s church is kept in good heart for the future.

“The PCC has plans approved to convert the existing vestry area of the church to a small meeting room equipped with a loo and facilities to allow us to make and serve drinks and wash up afterwards. (At the moment someone takes the dirty cups home in a bucket). The plans are quite straightforward but as you would expect with a listed building it still comes to a considerable amount of money- £60,000. More information can be found here.” says Revd Nigel Done.

There is a very special Family Service on February 14th (Valentine’s Day) to celebrate and give thanks for the love in your life. It might be someone you have recently fallen for, or been married to for twenty years or an elderly parent you appreciate anew. At this service the congregation will be building a big heart to signify the love that is shared in our community and receive donations towards securing the future of the village church.

The service starts at 10:45am, Sunday 14th February.

The new look Link magazine is out and available from the Post Office in Rode, price 60p.

It’s packed with local news, reports on community activities and information, as well as being a great local directory for local businesses. It’s not just for Rode, it covers Tellisford, Woolverton and Farleigh Hungerford too. There’s even a puzzle page now.

Pop into the post office and pick up a copy, or even better, subscribe to the monthly magazine. email link@rodevillage.com for details of how to subscribe.

Did you spot the ‘deliberate’ mistake in this month’s Link?

Just in case you didn’t, here it is:

It was deliberate, honestly

If you are wanting tickets to see the eagerly anticipated village panto, my my I can’t believe it’s NOT Mamma Mia, then you are out of luck. All three nights have now sold out.

Reports abound of locals gnashing their teeth in despair after being told there are no tickets left.

As half the fun of the show is audience participation, three sell-out nights will make for a terrific evening of entertainment, no matter which night you attend if you are lucky enough to have a ticket.

If you are going to miss out through not having a ticket, you can at least console yourself by picking up a copy of the February edition of the Link, where pantoman Gary Holloway reveals the music that makes him tick in a desert island discs interview.

The village Panto, My my, I can’t believe it’s not Mamma Mia, runs from the 11th-13th of February in Rode Memorial Hall. If you want to see it (and you really should), you’ll need to get to Rode Post Office or the Cross Keys pretty quickly. The Friday and Saturday nights have sold out already! Some tickets remain for the Thursday, but at the time of typing only a few remain unsold, so eager is the village to see what could well be Pantoman, Gary Holloway’s magnum opus.

With plenty of audience participation required, and the prospect of your friends and neighbours belting out some Abba classics, you will be kicking yourself if you miss it.

The design for the revamped rodevillage.com is almost complete – just some tweaks here and there and some additional graphics for the homepage as well.

It could be up and running, ready for some publicity, by the end of the week.

After the great success of the 2009 Festival, we’re pleased to announce that the 2010 Rode Village Festival will take place on Saturday July 17th.

The festival committee are meeting in the week of 18th January to start planning what promises to be a spectacular event.

More news will follow as it becomes available, and details of how villagers can get involved in the running of the festival.

Hello there.

I’m working on creating a new site for Rodevillage.com that will contain as much information on Rode, services, businesses, news and activities as possible.

It’ll take a little while to get it all up and running – so the site will go through a series of changes and alterations over the next few weeks. Please bear with me and keep checking back to see how things are getting on.

Best wishes

David