Hi folks, lots of news again, here goes....

1. The pesky shop computer is (almost) fixed
2. 150 Club renewals due now
3. Meat is great value in the shop
4. Thriplow calendars are now on sale
5. Newspaper reservations
6. We had a problem with our computer

This is now sorted, with just the receipt printer that needs to be fixed. We can give you big receipts, if you need one, from another printer. We lost the contents of the hard disk, we still don’t know why this happened but we have reloaded everything back onto the computer and it is running fine again. It would have to happen when we were already short staffed wouldn’t it! But the hand written system worked until we got it fixed and Helen’s flexibility with hours and support from quite a few volunteers pulling together (as always happens here) helped us make it through a difficult period. Thanks to everyone concerned and we are sorry if any customer had to wait a little longer than usual. Hopefully the receipt printer will be fixed soon.

2. 150 Club subscriptions now due.

The winners of the September draw were Peter Weissberg, Gina Gomez, myself (wow!) and Judy Bradshaw. Congratulations to all the winners.

The October draw is the last one for this year’s subscribers. We need you to renew your membership of the club and retain your ball numbers as quickly as possible please. We will keep your ball numbers reserved for you until the end of the month but any balls not claimed by the end of October will be released into full availability, and you may lose your precious number!

If anyone doesn’t know what we are talking about here, it costs £15 per year to own one of 150 balls that go into our monthly draw. Prizes each month are £50, £30, £20 and £10 so you have a better chance of winning than you do on the national lottery! All profits go back to the shop, so the draw really helps us with our funds. By all means please ask in the shop if you want a number (or an extra one) - there are a few spare from last year.

The shop staff will be pestering you for your renewal fees in the next few weeks.

3. We have a great deal on with Russells Meats in Meldreth. He does a special “2 packs for £6.00” deal, which allows you to mix and match your purchases. We find the meats are very good, and he also does various flavoured, marinated meats and lots of sausage varieties. Try them and see what you think. The meat is kept in our display fridge, and sometimes we have some frozen packs.

4. Thriplow Calendars are now on sale for 2014. We've reached the last quarter of 2013 already - hasn't the year gone quickly? We are now selling 2014 Thriplow calendars - each month has a photo taken locally by John Deed. We think you will agree that they are all very beautiful, and there is information about the village on the back. A4 sized, this would be an excellent item to post as a Christmas present as well as to buy for yourselves, and a bargain at £5 each. (And we still have some Thriplow cookery books (£5) and coasters (£1.99) for sale)

5. Newspaper Reservations. One of the consequences of the computer crash was that we lost our up to date list of people who have reserved newspapers. This has been largely reconstructed now, but we don’t know who wants us to keep their newspaper for later collection if they are not able to collect it on a particular (weekend) day. Our policy is that any reserved newspaper not collected by 11.30 on a weekend day can be sold to someone else but we know a few people have told us to keep their paper even if they don’t collect it by closing time (they guarantee to pay for it later). If you are one of these people, please can you let us know and we will mark the list accordingly.

Just a short reminder that if you go away, PLEASE let us know so that we don’t keep your paper unnecessarily. We nearly always have to turn people away at weekends and then later on we send uncollected papers back to the supplier. That also means they won’t increase our order quantities so it hurts all round.

Kevin