Mickleton

WEDNESDAY CLUB: The AGM was held on March 19. The deputy chairman, Marina Sutton, opened the meeting, reminding everybody that the club was in its 36th year. A letter was read from the chairman expressing her good wishes and saying she is well on the road to recovery.

Treasurer Neville Date gave his report. Subscriptions had not been increased for six years, but with the economy as it was they would be raised to £5 for the year 2003/4.

The committee was re-elected and the deputy chairman thanked everyone for coming and the meeting was closed.

The bring and buy sale was opened and went very well.

Mary Phillipson gave a vote of thanks to the committee.

The meeting on April 2 was again opened by the vice-chairman, M Sutton, members were brought up to date with the next outing to Five Alls for lunch and then on to the Cotswold Woollen Weavers for the tour. This was followed by a quiz organised by Neville Date, who was thanked for his hard work putting the quiz together and running the show with Nancy Bowstead as the scorer.

THE MICKLETON SOCIETY: The April meeting of the society combined both the society's AGM in the first half of the evening and guest speaker Mr Kenneth Dudley, a former Director General of the UK's largest non-Governmental Food and Drink Research Association, in the second half.

More than 70 members were present for the evening and were welcomed by the society chairman, Mr Brian Wall. He reported that the society had 156 members at December 31 and that several new members had joined since. He believed that the society had enjoyed another successful year and was now pleased to report that a committee was now firmly established.

Following the AGM, the chairman introduced the guest speaker Mr Kenneth Dudley whose subject for the evening was Mistakes.

This proved to be an interesting and highly amusing series of tales and anecdotes from Mr Dudley's career over the years in the food packaging and re-cycling industry, centring on mistakes he had made along the way.

Brian Wall in his vote of thanks, said how he had enjoyed the talk and thought there were probably many more stories Mr Dudley could relate to the society at another time.

Tickets for the garden party to be held at the Old Vicarage on June 20 were on sale during the evening.

The Honington Hall outing is on September 15. Details will be available at a later date.

GARDENING CLUB: Chairman, Bridget Maslin, began the April meeting by saying that due to Stefan Buczacki's generous donation of his time we are able to give £837 to King George's Hall Development Fund. Bridget thanked everyone who had worked so hard to make the evening such a success. She then referred to A Moment of Spring ie the Spring Show. It had been very successful with a higher than average number of entries. Beat Kitchen had gained 21 points with Gay Rocheford a close second with 20 points. Ann Wall thanked everyone who had exhibited and was pleased to see several members entering for the first time. Anne Suffield informed everyone about forthcoming outings.

Bridget then welcomed Mr Robert Hare who had kindly agreed to talk about Your Garden in April at short notice. He was trained at Wisley and had been a lecturer at Pershore College for 30 years. He brought a marvellous collection of examples of flowering shrubs, trees and plants which you could expect to find flowering this time of year. The competition of an Easter arrangement was won by Peggy Atherton.