The South Lakes Talking Newspaper has been an active and much-used charity for almost 40 years, serving blind and partially sighted people in our area and beyond.

Each week we produce a digest of news and articles from The Westmorland Gazette, sending this out at no charge on memory sticks to more than 150 listeners, most of whom receive their recording on Saturday morning. This enables them to keep as up-to-date as possible with not only the local news but also forthcoming events in the area.

This service, often described as ‘a lifeline’ by its users, is staffed entirely by volunteers, numbering around 40, but the charity has reached a point where some extra help is sorely needed.

We would very much like to hear from anyone who can spare a few hours roughly once per month to help us to keep up the high standards we have achieved over the years.

Our pressing need at the moment is for assistance with the very important tasks of copying the memory sticks and posting them out, but if your talents are of the journalistic variety we are always on the look-out for script editors – a challenging but interesting role.

Some minimal skill with using a computer is useful but definitely not essential for both of these jobs.

However, if you’re perfectly happy with computers, we can most certainly find you a niche in the organisation: we run two separate computer systems in our recording studio, and sometimes struggle on the technical front.

So if you think you may be able to help in keeping this valuable free service going, please ring or e-mail me, and I will be glad to give you as much information as I can.

Finally, we are always keen to welcome new listeners to the Talking Newspaper, so should you have a friend or relative who could find our recordings useful please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Bruce Carnaffin, Chairman, South Lakes Talking Newspaper Association, 16 Collin Hill, Kendal. Tel 01539 720172 bruce.carnaffin@gmail.com