WE HAD good attendance for our August meeting with a few apologies including Dorothy Isles and Linda Woodward.

We thanked Margaret Adams for her lovely table flowers of French marigolds.

We thanked President, Doreen Tucker, for arranging the lovely outing to Bishopstone, Wiltshire that a lot of us went to in early July and we also thanked Val Dalby for masterminding the Rose Bowl Exhibit for Stroud Country Show in mid July, for which we won first prize.

Our exhibit comprised five very different cushions, which all received high marks from the judges and Val exhibited them to their best advantage for the show.

She displayed them again for all members to examine and some photographs have been taken for us to start a new Scrap Book in the near future.

Some correspondence was then discussed and a financial update given by Treasurer Linda.

There were quite a few outings to consider and calendars/diaries can now be ordered for next year at very good prices.

With business concluded, we had a change to our speaker, as poor Mr Wilkins contacted me early in the morning, but could barely speak due to a very bad cold or flu.

Luckily I was fortunate in securing Mr Bob Smith from Chalford, who gave an excellent talk and slideshow on ‘Moths’.

Evidently, there are an incredible number of species of moths and some are so ‘showy’ and beautiful that you would believe they were butterflies if you didn’t know better.

He discussed the origins of the naming of some of them and showed some excellent slides, including pictures of the caterpillars and how they hatch out.

A really good speaker and one I can really recommend.

He finished by judging the monthly competition of an Amusing holiday poem/tale as follows:-

First - Mary Jarrett

Second - Margaret Adams

We concluded with refreshments, the drawing of the raffle and singing of the National Anthem.

If you missed this meeting, the next one will be on Tuesday, September 2, to start as usual at 7.15pm in St. Matthew’s Church Hall, when we will welcome Mr G. Yiend and ‘Cider with Rosie’ for our own acknowledgement of Laurie Lee’s Centenary year.

New members or visitors are always very welcome to join us and there are refreshments, a raffle and sales table available every month.

The competition for September will be for ‘A display of home grown produce’.

I hope to see you there.