The Community Welcomes our New Vicar
4th August 2008, at 7.54pm the sound of one church bell being chimed ten times echoed across Lyneham and Bradenstoke village, marking a sign that we have a new ministry. The newly installed The Reverend Jesse Holland had just finished pulling the bell rope and chirpily the Bishop of Ramsbury The Rt Revd Stephen Conway calls over a packed congregation " A few more please!" Full story more..

Summer Lightning 2008
A series of spectacular lightning strikes lit up the skies as a thunderstorm swept from Sussex through to Suffolk. The Met Office said particularly high temperatures - peaking at 80°F (27°C) - contributed to these types of storms, as they made their way across southern England. Despite the London skyline experiencing the impressive light show, there was little actual rainfall in the area, with the clouds particularly high in the atmosphere for a storm. 6th August 2008

Spectacular opening for Olympics
China has presented a dramatic display of fireworks, music and dancing to mark the opening of its Beijing Olympics. Some 10,000 performers took part in the ceremony, watched on TV by an estimated one billion people, before athletes paraded around the national stadium. After a lengthy wait, Mark Foster lead the Great Britain team into the stadium while proudly holding aloft the Union Flag. Some 90,000 fans packed the new national stadium - known as the Bird's Nest because of its steel lattice construction - and cheered the performers. 8th August 2008

Let the Games Beijing
THE Olympics opening ceremony began today in Beijing with spectacular fireworks displays and lavish light shows. An army of 2,008 drummers pounded out the countdown to the Games, which mark China’s emergence from impoverished isolation to economic might. At eight minutes and eight seconds past 8pm on the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008, the Beijing Olympics begin. It's an auspicious number because the Chinese word sounds like..."ba", which sounds like the word for "prosper".