OUR final Cafe & Market for 2014 will be held on Saturday, December 20 from10am-noon when we will be serenaded by the brass band combo, The Friday Parpers, and our theme will be Crisis at Christmas with our charity stall raising funds for St Richard's Hospice.

There will be stalls selling food (including cheese, fresh vegetables and apple juice from Hanley Swan's community orchard, and stalls selling goods so if you forgot to get a Christmas present for a small godchild or an aged aunt you'll find something at our market in Hanley Swan village hall. You can also chat to friends in our cafe over fresh coffee and home-baked cakes.

We have just finalised our schedule for 2015 - our ninth year of operation, and a year full of innovation for us. For the first time we will be having a car boot sale (in February weather permitting), one of the few car boots to be held in winter.

In March the Malvern Repair Cafe takes up residence at our event swiftly followed in April by a talk from Karen Kingston, a world expert on de-cluttering.

In May we will be looking at the finer points of cricket and in June our attention turns to holidays, with music from a local steel band to get you in the mood for the Caribbean.

In July we will feature Vintage and Vinyl in homage to the 70th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second World War and in September we will be featuring jams - both the sort you eat and the jazz you hear.

Our first event in 2015 will be on Saturday,January 31 when our focus will be on winter soups, with recipes and (we hope) samples, plus all the usual stalls and live music.

Our markets are held monthly in Hanley Swan village hall on the last Saturday of the month between 10am and noon (except August, when we have a rest, and December when it's on the last Saturday before Christmas).

All profits are donated to community projects and in our eight years of existence we have planted spring bulbs around the village; paid for and installed new duck houses on the village pond; supported projects for the Village of the Year Competition; paid for new picnic tables and new shrubs around the village pond; financially supported our village youth club; organised a scarecrow competition; provided a strimmer for the village pond warden; helped fund a community arts project (sculpture by the village pond); contributed towards a new cricket pavilion for the Upton & Hanley Cricket Club; financially supported our annual village show, our parish magazine and the refurbishment of our village hall; and we have contributed towards a fridge for our local playgroup, a piano for our local primary school and towards keeping Upton library open.

VAL FARE