Mayor’s Christmas Toy Appeal 2015

The 2015 Tunbridge Wells Mayor’s Christmas Toy appeal starts on Saturday 14 November.

Each year the Toy Appeal ensures that disadvantaged children in the borough receive Christmas presents donated by individuals, schools and businesses. A team of volunteers coordinate the gifts, carefully selecting them so they are age-appropriate for the child and beautifully wrapped. Without the Toy Appeal some children would not have any presents on Christmas Day.

Last year donations of new and nearly new gifts helped over 260 local children have a happier Christmas. Donations of new or as-new gifts are needed to ensure this year’s appeal is equally successful. Gifts do not need to be wrapped.

The appeal runs until Saturday 19 December, donations can be left at various points in the borough including Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery, Weald Sports Centre, Cranbrook, Southborough Library, Pembury Library and Barsley’s in Paddock Wood.

The volunteers organising the appeal politely request that no candles or cuddly toys are donated. If anyone needs an idea for a suitable gift they can find inspiration from the gift tags on the Giving Trees in the Assembly Hall Theatre, Royal Victoria Place, Trinity Theatre and Tunbridge Wells Gateway.

Remembrance Sunday in Pembury.

There will be a service at 10.30am, St Peter’s, followed by a parade to the war memorial in Hastings Road.

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

Poem by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21st September 1914.