THE first Tuesday evening in October thankfully remained fairly dry despite a really wet and windy autumnal week.

We started as usual with Jerusalem and gave thanks to Pam Elliott for her lovely table flowers, which included some pretty roses.

Sadly there were quite a few apologies again, including Rowena Eccles, Patsy Williams, Hazel White, Dot Brunning, Pat Hughes, Georgie Hall and Dorothy Isles; some of whom were unwell and one member still recovering from an operation. Hopefully more members will be able to join us in early November.

President Doreen intends to make a new scrapbook and to this end Margaret Adams gave her some photographs to make a start.

Margaret also thanked us all for the Diamond Anniversary card we recently sent her.

We continued with some correspondence and also updated plans for our Christmas party social planned for Tuesday, December 2, as usual in St. Matthew’s Church Hall. Members will need £7 available for this event, which will include food and some entertainments.

We then welcomed Lazy Cook and self-publisher Mo Smith from Bisley who gave us her fascinating talk ‘London Here I Come’ about the early days of her career in London in the 1960s working for the BBC at Broadcasting House as a Television Secretary for Mr Antony Craxton.

Mo worked on such programmes as Woman’s Hour and later on Crackerjack.

She met such stars as The Beatles, but still managed to fit in some clubs, such as Sailing Club Sundays, a course at the London School of Dress Design and visits to Lyons Corner House.

Mo has remained a very busy lady and, as many will know, has written and self-published many cookery books over the years, been featured on local radio programmes and given many talks to clubs and groups such as yours.

We finished with the calling of the raffle, refreshments and the monthly competition winners announced as:-

First - Linda Foreman

Second - Mary Jarrett

Third - Margaret Adams

Our next meeting on Tuesday, November 4 will be the AGM, followed by ‘Christmas Flowers’ - a demonstration by local lady and Chelsea medal winner, Jayne Morriss with the monthly competition being for a Christmas decoration (tree or table).

Visitors and new members are always very willing to join us and there are always refreshments, a sales table and raffle available.

As a group we also go on a few outings, such as the summer Birthday Party outing, this year to Bishopstone and Hinton-Parva in Wiltshire and more recently on Friday, October 10 a group of six of us were lucky enough to visit Denman College in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

For some of us, it was our first visit.

We were very fortunate with this trip, as longstanding member and past President, Rowena Eccles, was lucky enough to win a bursary on the Denman Dip scheme earlier in the year.

Rowena then kindly donated her winnings so that a party of us could go to Denman for a day trip, including a guided tour of the lovely house and gardens there, a welcome with coffee and biscuits, followed by a delicious two course lunch all washed down with wine and coffee.

If this wasn’t enough, after the tour and some exercise (thank goodness) we went back inside for an afternoon cream tea.

It was a really lovely day with a warm welcome from the Denman staff, friendly chatter with the other groups also visiting and even the sun shined on us.

I can truly recommend a visit there and the only trouble would be choosing which course to take from the brochure which we all came home with a copy of.