After the Homage and Silent Tribute, our meeting started with the chairman correcting an error made in his last report when he stated that Major Peter James MBE Ret. had served in Hong Kong during WW2. This was an error as Peter had actually served in this arena in the post WW2 period.

Our main activity for the evening was to make the final arrangements for our forthcoming Coffee Morning and table sale at Powick Village hall on the morning of May 24 starting at 10.30am. Our Grand Raffle has been endowed with many fabulous prizes donated with the generosity of most of the businesses in the area and we are hoping to have a better attendance than last year

After the business meeting was concluded, our members were entertained with a selection of interesting objects brought along by some of the members. These included some very old hand-made carpenter’s tools and hand-made engineering tools made by an apprentice engineer during his training. We were also shown a frightening display of Ghurkha war weapons that we hope will never fall into the wrong hands. We were also shown a ‘flying shuttle’ complete with loaded bobbin as used for weaving and a complete silk cocoon still enclosing its original occupant. This was followed by looking at a pure silk map of the occupied territory in WW2 as smuggled to prisoners of war inside among other things Cumberland Pencils, as an aide to navigating should they be able to escape. RAF aircrew were also issued with such items to help them get back if they were shot down over enemy territory.

Our next meeting will be at Madresfield Club on Tuesday June 10 at 8.15pm and new members are very welcome so come along and join us our meetings are always interesting.

John Mason