THERE’S another exciting line-up of great local foods at the farmers’ market at the village hall on Sunday.

COGS, the group campaigning to open Gilsland station, will be manning the information stall. It hopes to be able to report positively on the vital Network Rail study, now nearly two months overdue!

OUR tea room continues to attract many visitors, for as well as the quality of the coffee, cakes and soups, there is a regularly-changing display of local talent on the walls.

From this weekend, the pictures, some of them for sale, will be the work of the Tuesday Painters Group that has been meeting in the village hall for the past 10 weeks.

The group will continue to meet on alternate Tuesday mornings, on the first and third Tuesdays every month, without their tutor, but confidently sharing ideas and skills.

Just like the art and crafts group on Tuesday afternoons, the group is open to all and is comfortably informal, but produces lovely work!

EXCELLENT news that, after many delays due to bureaucracy, the blankets have finally arrived at the children’s cancer hospital in Malawi.

Innumerable people have been knitting squares in Greenhead tearoom, at the regular drop-in sessions in Gilsland Village Hall and at home, in wonderful colours to cheer and comfort these children.

WHEREVER I go in Tynedale, people comment on what wonderful facilities and activities we have in Greenhead - a place they used to think of as just somewhere with a difficult hillclimb for the car going west.

We are indeed lucky, both in the various grants we have been able to access and in the people who keep things going so well.

People come from far and wide to eat here and to the market and the village hall for activities like quilting and dancing.

We are really fortunate in our village hall. Once the Miners’ Reading Room, then the church hall, it was leased in 1997 by the parish council from the Blenkinsopp Estate for 125 years.

The extension was completed in 2003, and since then, life has changed for all of us!

But nothing stays the same. The village hall committee has been led by four people since it began, and five years is quite enough for anyone to fill this role.

The time has come for new people to come forward to join the committee – it meets about every two months and is concerned mostly with domestic maintenance and fund-raising – it is also responsible for our excellent youth club. Nothing onerous.

The hall is immensely versatile: a cinema, theatre, concert hall, training space, a market, dance hall, art studio, gallery, nursery, party venue, whatever you need!

Please come to the AGM on Wednesday to show your support, especially if you belong to one of the groups that uses the hall or you have not yet set foot in it. You need to see what a splendid kitchen it has! The meeting starts at 7.30pm.