July 2013

JULY MEETING REPORT

Strawberry tea at Iris’s – August 15th
Next Meeting – Sept 12th
Speaker – Angela Pratt on Being a J.P.
Competition – An unusual key

On the 27th June a number of us gathered in Pam Dickerson’s very pleasant garden to indulge in an alfresco lunch. Pam had provided a delicious spread and we tucked in and enjoyed ourselves immensely. There was also a sales table and draw so that later she was able to announce that £155 had been collected to go towards the rebuilding of Falkenham Church wall. Thanks Pam and we hope you have a lovely time enjoying the special birthday celebrations that are being arranged for you!
Last month I said that I hoped our team that entered the Suffolk East Federation annual quiz would do us proud. Well, they certainly did! The four ladies, Pam Cole, Edna Stuckey, Eva Croxford and Jean Shaw came second out of a field of 47! I think they are already talking of doing even better next year. As a matter of interest Bucklesham and Brightwell W.I. came first so we must be a pretty brainy lot in this neck of the woods!
The speaker at our July meeting was Mrs Pat Deliss and her talk was called ‘We Only Wanted a Pony (A Humorous Look at Children and Horses)’. She started with the famous quote from Pride and Prejudice ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’, but changed it to ‘A young girl at a certain stage in her development decides that she must be in want of a pony’, the young girl in this case being her four year old daughter Sophie. The pony was duly bought, christened Daisy and Sophie was soon standing up on her back and attaching an old cart to her stirrups so that she and her sister could take a ride. Even at four years old Sophie took her pony to shows and won prizes. This set the tone for what was to follow.
When they moved to Suffolk they acquired in succession: Siskin, Pixy and Samuel Pepys. By this time Sophie’s ambitions had soared and she was anxious to go to Badminton and do Dressage, Show Jumping and Cross Country. It was when they acquired a horse called Talking Pictures that they thought they had a winner. In one competition Sophie was so placed that the horse could have knocked down 4 fences and still come first; unfortunately he knocked down 5; they found he tended to drag a leg. By the time Sophie was at university they had bought a young horse, Otto, who jumped like a dream. But on one outing he very sadly fell at a water jump and from then on completely lost his confidence. She told us that in this game you really have to love horses because inevitably, at some point, they are going to let you down.
Pat recounted many amusing stories about their adventures including the time they went to a show and forgot to take a bridle. She heard later of someone who got to the venue and then found they had left the pony behind!

V E Bines