Sawston Fete - can you help?

We'd like to have a book and bake stall at the Sawston Fete at Spicers Field, 7 July at 1pm.  Are you able to help?  We could do with:

 

* helpers on the day

* portable tables

* cake

 

We're going to use the stall as a way of publicising the library, and have asked the library service for bookmarks to hand out.  We'd also like to put on a craft activity for children.

Do let me and Pat know if you can help! 

Book Sale - 15 June

At the library, New Road, 10am–1pm. Books from 10p!

Refreshments, crafts for the children.

Contact Yasmin Emerson: 360934 or yasmin@sawstonlibrary.org.uk

A Glimpse of Eternal Snows - Jane Wilson-Howarth - Thursday 2 May

Jane Wilson-Howarth will be talking about her book 'A Glimpse of Eternal Snows' at the library on Thursday 2 May, 2-3pm.  Please reserve your free tickets at the library.  Refreshments will be served.

 

A Glimpse of Eternal Snows by Jane Wilson-Howarth

Synopsis

This is the autobiographical story of a British doctor who, a month after the birth of her second child, returns to Nepal. The book describes what drives her to leave – what drives her to ignore the admonitions of doctors and their gloomy prognostications about her son. Quitting Cambridge means abandoning access to good medical care. She doesn’t know what to expect but fears the worst, yet she hopes it will allow the child to live in dignity and happiness; it certainly allows him to escape daily blood tests, feeding tubes, hospitals and institutions. Family life returns to normal as he defies his doctors’ predictions. Back in Nepal, life is no longer dominated by hospitals and the parents learn from the tolerant accepting attitudes of the locals they live and work with. The mother struggles with guilt, often thinking that she has made the wrong decision, but guilt is mitigated by seeing a joyous carefree child develop.

 

A group of giggling young Nepali mothers gathered around to see my five-week-old: to compare babies. They took him from me and pressed in to see. ‘How beautiful,’ ‘Such soft white skin,’ ‘These little holes in his ears are a gift from heaven.’ This was the first time strangers had admired my new baby, and at that moment I knew that it had been right to flee England. There he’d been still as a rag doll; he twitched at any noise and vomited after each tube-feed. He was suffering. Panic often showed in his eyes. We didn’t know what to expect of the future. All we knew was that it would be better than submitting to what the Cambridge doctors had planned for our quiet beautiful baby.

We had been living in urban Nepal, but would be moving to remote Rajapur Island in the middle of the largest tributary of the Ganges. We were up-beat about going but Nepalis warned of the heat, bandits and disease in the Plains. On Rajapur though we entered an accepting, straightforward community where David was special – touched by god – not abnormal. Our neighbours saw beyond his handicap. He stopped twitching at the slightest sound and he rallied physically too. Soon there was a sparkle in his eyes and slowly, he started to respond to us, even tease us. We were right to take him away to Nepal. And David’s older brother, Alexander, was spared spending his early years in dank England, hanging about in hospital waiting rooms. We settled into a contented, sleepy life on our island where we lived close to tiger, rhino and wild elephant, and village boys taught Alexander to climb mango trees, make catapults, catch skinks and fly kites.

The one sympathetic hospital doctor in Cambridge had advised us to treat David normally and we took this as a licence to take him on his first trek; at the age of four months, we packed up David’s heart medicines and tubes and headed up over precipitous drops and wobbly rope bridges to explore drippy forests and mediaeval hill-forts. The mountains were spectacular and healing. Strangely David’s heart disease protected him from the affects of high altitude. Our arrival in each mountain village was heralded by choruses of, ‘Children have come!’ We’d be surrounded and David taken from his carrying basket to be handed around for all to cuddle. He glowed in all this attention. He smiled and burbled appreciatively at all his admirers. Nepalis helped us see David’s qualities and talent for laughter.

I took up a little part-time health work, taking David with me to village meetings as part of my credentials for talking with the women. Our Nepali neighbours had their own problems yet they took life as it came and dealt with their hardships cheerily. Their spirituality and fatalism seemed to allow them to snatch some joy out of life too, and they helped us see our situation in proportion and live contentedly with our – at times – uneasy child. We did not dwell on David’s problems but, having absorbed the positive aspects of both cultures, could enjoy his happy personality and increasingly mischievous sense of humour.

This book describes the emotions of facing up to having a special child. It also shows that throughout all this we did not allow David’s problems to swamp us. We could still laugh, be optimistic. The book looks at some difficult issues surrounding disability and the ethics of who should be treated – or not. It contrasts our unhealthy, unhelpful Western views of imperfection and death with a more tolerant, fatalistic view in Nepal. There it was easier to take life day by day.

Storytime

Storytime for under fives at Sawston Library

10am to 10.30am on the 2nd Wednesday of each month during term time:

17th April (special session)
8th May
12th June
10th July

Rhymes, stories and fun - it's free!

Official opening - 16th March

The temporary library at SVC (on the grass in front of the Arts Centre / music block, on New Road) is nearly finished.  Library staff and others have been working hard to get it finished in a very short space of time; Sawston Village College have been exceptionally helpful. 

Wed 6 March - library opens, hours as below.

Sat 16 March 10.30am - official opening, complete with ribbon-cutting, a celebration cake and a treasure hunt (for adults and children) around the library.  Please come!  RSVP by 11th March to Dawn Coleman, 01223 703520.

Are you able to help with drinks or cakes? Please let Pat and Chrissie know if so.  The library staff have made sure there's space for your donated to books, so do bring those along.  

Sawston Library opening hours from 6 March:

Mon 2pm - 6pm

Tue 3pm - 7pm

Wed 10am - 1pm and 2pm - 5pm

Thu Closed

Fri 10am - 1pm and 2pm - 5pm

Sat 10am - 1pm

County Friends Annual Meeting - 25 April

We have received the following invitation to the annual Library Friends meeting to be held on Thursday 25 April.  Two FoSL attended last year and found this very interesting.  I'd like to go; let me know if you'd like to come too, and we can arrange car sharing. 

Yasmin

---

County Friends Annual Meeting

Dear All

Please reserve this date: 25th April 9.30-12.30, for the annual Library

Friends meeting. We have booked the Gamlingay Eco Hub for this meeting

as we've all heard a lot about the success of this award winning

building and I am looking forward to seeing it - so I thought you would

be interested too.

Do look at the website www.eco-hub.info

The postcode is SG19 3JR

The room will hold 50 so we will need to limit numbers please, we have

17 Friends Groups so if we ask for 2-3  from each group please, allowing

for some not able to attend as it is too far or during the day, and we

have around 5 staff who wish to attend too.

Our Head of Service, Christine May, will give an update on current

pressures and plans. Do let me have any other agenda items please I

already have joint  income generation and promotion and staff attendance

at meetings, but most importantly we want to showcase the achievements

of the Friends themselves. So please do bring examples of posters for

events or let me have them in advance so we can have a display table (I

have a fabulous Friends of Rock Road Library mug for example that I will

bring just in case they can't bring one themselves.) We will build in

plenty of networking time as I know you find the most valuable part

being able to talk to each other about ideas and we will have

RichardYoung, James Nicol, Ed Strangeways,Sue Williamson and myself all

on hand to listen to ideas and views.

With best wishes

Lynda

Library re-opens!

Work to install a new temporary building is now complete and Sawston Library will re-open to the public on Wednesday 6 March.

The new library is on the grass in front of Sawston Village College's Arts Centre, off New Road. There will be an official launch of the new temporary building on Saturday 16 March.