Kentish Express Ashford & District
Would hall sale have made Sir John cross?
Our story last week about Ashford’s Red Cross centre being put up for sale certainly wouldn’t have amused one of the town’s forefathers.
Sir John Furley, who was born on March 19 in 1836 in the Masonic Lodge in North Street, Ashford, was an English humanitarian who worked to improve medical care both in wartime and at home.
He was an active member of the Red Cross from its foundation and one of the founders of the St John Ambulance Association, set up to promote first aid training.
He became the first director of stores for St John Ambulance, responsible for organising a supply of ambulances and other materials, and used his practical experiences to change the design of early stretchers, enabling a patient to be carried more easily and safely, without discomfort.
He also designed horsedrawn ambulance carriages and helped with the design of ambulance trains and hospital ships, used in wartime. Furley recognised that an organised system for training people in first aid for everyday life was needed.
He also saw that those who had been trained could be medical reserves in time of war. In July 1877, with others, he founded the St John Ambulance Association to train people in providing first aid to the injured.
The hall on the Quantock Road site that’s been put on the market, for £200,000, is named after him and he is commemorated with a plaque in the town’s Park Mall shopping centre (just near the entrance to the Wilko store). The charity says the site is being sold to meet changing needs.
We are about to enter the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”, the famous first line from the To Autumn poem by English Romantic poet John Keats.
But now is also the “Season of tints and mellow brownfulness”.
Look around and every other person seems to have been Tango’ed after spending too much time lying by a pool or on the beach in the Mediterranean this summer.
Years ago one main aim of a summer holiday was to get as dark a tan as possible during your two-week package trip.
Then you could return to work/school to be greeted with comments like “Ooh, you’re a great colour, must have been a good holiday”.
Then, largely thanks to Australians (what has Australia ever done for us apart from this?), we were alerted to the dangers of skin cancer from too much sun exposure and factor 50 sun cream became widely used.
Yet now if the tans on display in Ashford town centre in recent weeks are anything to go by, we’ve reverted to the good old days of lapping up the sun even if that means enduring red-raw shoulders and swollen ankles first.
So it is true that only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
An elderly member of the Nuts and Bolts team remembers going to Spain as a youngster and applying greasy liquid suntan lotion that could have easily doubled up as oil in which to fry eggs.
Factor... yes factor life that if you put that on you’ll burn!
And what’s it all for anyway? A suntan probably only lasts about the same length of time that holiday highlights do, before they both fade into distant memories.
Poundland may have three outlets in Ashford now – one in the High Street, one in County Square and another on the Warren retail park – but it might have to consider changing its name.
Mostly Poundland or Mainly Poundland might be a better description of the stores these days.
Notices in the High Street branch windows advise customers that “We now sell some amazing value products that cost more than £1”.
The sign adds that if any customers have “queries” in relation to the shop selling items for more than £1 they can either talk to the store manager or take a special telephone number to call.
Ashford MP Damian Green has tweeted a tongue-in-cheek message to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after his well-publicised row with Virgin Trains.
The Work and Pensions Secretary posted a message on Twitter last Thursday saying “On a Virgin Train. Top tip – book a seat before you travel. It’s an apparently little-known service they offer”.
It follows the Labour leader’s video of himself sitting on the floor of a Virgin train after claiming he couldn’t get a seat because the carriages were “ram-packed”.
Mr Corbyn had claimed the situation supported his argument for the renationalisation of the railways.
CCTV footage released by the train company appeared to contradict Mr Corbyn’s claims, showing him walking past spare seats.