Christmas Get Together 2022

On a very chilly December night the Society was able to host a “back to normal” festive Christmas party complete with a sumptuous buffet prepared by Julia and Stephanie Dobbin. The new venue at St Swithuns Centre was ideal for the occasion being warm, spacious and with a bar providing a wide selection of drinks served by volunteers from St Swithuns church.

After enjoying the buffet we were entertained by David Allen who related the true-life case of Madeleine Smith, a notorious Victorian lady who poisoned her lover. To engage his audience David co-opted some of them to play the roles of some of the characters. Our Treasurer, Hazel Goddard, was assigned the role of the villain and her husband Phil played the luckless part of her French lover whom she dispensed with cocoa sweetened with arsenic. As the plot thickened other members of the audience were engaged to swell the cast. It all ended happily for Madeleine Smith who was found not guilty on a legal technicality thereby depriving her victim of any justice.

Thanks go to Dick Ashwell for producing another brain-teasing quiz, to Margaret Cox and Angela Butler for the magnificent flower arrangements to decorate the tables, to Pat and Bob Tomkins for dispensing tea and coffee and to Hazel Goddard for organising the raffle. áááááááááááááááááaáááa