FEBRUARY’S meeting was very well attended.

Dates were given out for several forthcoming events with the Luncheon Club meeting next on February 27 at The Stirrup Cup in Bisley and on March 28 at The Ragged Cot.

The village map which has been on view for a while to give time for alterations or further suggestions to be made, will now be printed with the possibilities also of a smaller edition.

£28 had been sent to the Cobalt Unit in Cheltenham in January and Dinah thanked everyone who had contributed.

Lorraine Parslow captured our imagination with her talk on ‘Only Fools and Corsets’ which was all about her fifteen years as a T.V. extra starting in 1987.

Getting an Equity Card was not the easiest thing but once achieved she sent her qualifications including CVs, photographs etc to agencies and waited for the telephone to ring.

Living in Gloucestershire proved helpful as there is a lot of productive work within a radius of fifty miles and gradually the work came in. Lorraine’s talk was very amusing and interesting telling us how television worked, the various and many skills required and how every day something new could happen.

She has played many and varied roles including a nurse on ‘Casualty’, a policewoman in a police series and Mrs Bennett’s parlourmaid in ‘Pride and Prejudice’.

In ‘Chocolat’, which was filmed in France, she had been a ‘utility stand-in’ when extras stand in for major parts when the actors were having a break.

Lorraine has played a great variety of roles, all very enjoyable, and had the chance to wear many different costumes from a peasant’s rough and ready to a farthingale.

She has done character voices for children’s DVDs and explained that mature actresses often ‘voice over’ for boy parts as their voices do not break.

We all enjoyed her talk very much and she was thanked by Beryl.