Monmouth Bridge Club
Recent club results are as follows:
Monday October 7th, 7pm - 10pm: North/South: 1st Terry Hill and Barbara Newby; 2nd Nigel Saunders and Thomas Keyton; 3rd Tony Harris and Pauline Sanders. East/West: 1st Richard Brierly and Paul Williams; 2nd Gordon Casson and Jon Dullforce; 3rd Yvonne Rees and Sue Nam.
Wednesday October 9th (No Fear Bridge) 2pm - 4pm: North/South: 1st Jennifer Neale and Jill Blewitt; 2nd Terry Hill and Neil Sansom; 3rd Tom Riby and Ann Bradley. East/West: 1st Brigid and Thomas Hamilton-Jones ; 2nd Jenny Ricks and Joyce Jones; 3rd Frances Bayliss and Andre Hancock.
Thursday October 10th 7pm - 10pm: 1st= Jon Dullforce and Paul Williams; 1st= Pauline Sanders and Mike Roberts; 3rd David and Julie Davies.
For beginners and improvers classes contact Julie Davies at 07977 517818 or on-line at [email protected]
For details of Club activities go to: www.bridgewebs.com/monmouth.
Grosmont and District Gardening Club
In October, Rachel Salisbury talked about how our gardens can be really useful in ways that we never realised.
Many parts of certain plants are edible and medicines, fibres and perfumes can be produced from others. A fascinating talk.
Forthcoming events. Tuesday 5th November 7.30pm at Grosmont Town Hall, AGM followed by ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’
Tuesday 3rd December 7pm at The Bridge Inn, Kentchurch, Christmas Social Evening.
They have members from a wide area but visitors and new members are always welcome.
Contact Marion 01981 241161 or Jan 01600 750295 for further information or email [email protected]
Visit Grosmont Village website (Village Groups) and they are also on Facebook.
Monmouth Floral Society
The society was pleased to welcome Adrian Cooke from Pembroke for their October meeting with his demonstration, ‘Shades of Autumn’.
The first arrangement was based on a large silver punch bowl. A variety of pinned phormiums, fatsias, pittosporum, ivies, bergenia to which he then added in a two sided display of lilac gladioli, purple lizianthus, dark blue iris, dark pink gerbera and on the other side orange gladioli, orange lilies, orange and red roses, three blue ornamental cabbage were placed in the centre to create a very striking effect.
The second was based on a large pot covered with faded eucalyptus leaves. He then used ivies, crocosmia heads, osmanthus, rosehips around the base.
He then added as the central high point, several stems of orange alstromeria tied together with raffia wound down to the bottom. The base of the arrangement was then filled in with blue michaelmas daisy, orange roses and stems of iris foetidissima.
Third was a tall piece of Caledonian pine at the base of which he placed a dish filled with fatsia leaves, rubus, various ivies and rose hips. He then added red gladioli, sunflowers, and yellow roses to complete a very striking autumn arrangement.
Fourth was a wooden box covered in jacaranda seed heads filled with pittosporum, euonymous, areopolis and finished with sunflower heads from which the yellow petals had been stripped to give a very effective spin on the usual use of sunflowers.
Yellow roses, yellow button chrysanths and jacaranda seed cases and apples on sticks completed this lovely arrangement.
Fifth was a stunning large ‘bowl’ made from cut twigs; inside was a cylindrical vase. Amia, rubrus, hypericum and fatsia leaves covered the base on which he placed dark red gladioli, red gerberas and dark red roses to create a stunning arrangement.
Last was a lovely opalescent blue tall glass vase to suggest the move towards the festive season.
A few tall glittered twigs gave height to a linear arrangement of white gladioli, white iris, white roses, white gerberas and white lilies.
The chairman Jean Morgan invited President Eileen Williams to give a vote of thanks to Adrian for a wonderful afternoon. The arrangements were then raffled and members and visitors retired for tea and cakes.
Meetings are held at Bridges on the second Wednesday each month. The next demonstration will be given by Marie Munday from Stroud on the theme “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”. Doors open at 1.45pm and all visitors are welcome.
Hendre WI
At the October meeting of the Hendre WI, President Sue Evans, gave a warm welcome to 17 members and one prospective new member.
Twenty members and friends had enjoyed an outing to the Royal Mint on the 22nd July followed by an al fresco lunch and shopping at Cardiff Bay.
The next outing will be the annual Christmas Dinner to be held at The Hall at Gwehelog on the 3rd December, meeting at 12.30 for lunch at 1pm.
The business side of the meeting completed Sue welcomed Phil Munday of Munday & Jones Church Street, speaker for the evening.
Phil gave a very entertaining talk laced with plenty of humour about his life in retail, starting at the ago of 12 as a delivery boy in London and eventually becoming a well respected greengrocer in Church Steet.
Phil commenced his retail journey in London learning the Butcher’s trade.
On a holiday to Monmouth he and his wife Beverly decided they loved the area so much they moved to the town where Phil initially started work at “The Gourmet” in the Square with John Wills.
An opportunity arose to open a shop of his own and he went into partnership with Pauline Jones and entered the greengrocery trade. In his own words “initially not knowing one cabbage from another”.
Phil gave a potted history of how small town retail has changed over the 50 years of his career, how the advent of supermarkets took away a lot of the small retail shops and many well known characters were lost to Monmouth.
Also in this day and age internet shopping is having a big effect in our High Streets.
Members thanked Phil for a very entertaining talk and the evening concluded with tea and biscuits.
The next meeting of the Hendre WI will be held at the Rockfield Community Centre on 12th November commencing at 7.15pm when member Llinos Garret will be demonstrating Christmas cake decorating and giving members an
opportunity to “have a go”.
New members made warmly welcome.