ANERLEY WRITERS' CIRCLE

OUR thanks go to all readers responding to our requests for photos showing what Penge, Anerley and Crystal Palace looked like years ago.

We now have an collection for a really good guide book on the subject and have found a publisher who'll bring it out in the Autumn.

We still lack decent views of the trams and trolleybuses which plied this area, and also of the Essoldo Cinema and the Empire Theatre which preceded it - any offers?

Please contact on 020 8643 2220.

CHELSFIELD AFTERNOON WOMEN'S INSITUTE

AT our February meeting, Mr Peter Mawson, the principle of the Bromley Youth Music Trust gave a most interesting and enjoyable talk of the activities of the Trust and on the benefits it affords to all the children involved.

Started as a Music Service in 1969, the Trust was formed seven years ago and now teaches nearly 6000 children, from age five upwards, every year to sing or to play a musical instrument. After school classes are held every day at the Music Centre in Southborough Lane with longer ses-sions on Saturdays. Its bands, choirs and orchestras perform locally, nationally and internationally. Last year at the National Festival of Music for Youth, five groups were entered and all five won the top award in their class. The Trust has a stock of all types of instruments for hire to pupils and can give a helping hand to those from poorer families. A vote of thanks was proposed by Sheila Saunders, who said how much we had all en-joyed the afternoon.

English Comic Postcards is the subject of the talk by Mr Malcom Youngs at the next meeting on Wednesday March 13 at 2pm in Chelsfield Vil-lage Hall - everyone is welcome.

BECKENHAM PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

AT a recent competition members had to submit a set of prints or slides on a subject of their choice. The entries submitted were of a very high standard.

Steve Wilbur submitted a set of Lemurs taken in the wild during a holiday in Madagascar. The close up shots of these very elusive animals tested the photographers skills to the limit.

Seaside people, by Ron Edward's consisted of portraits of very ordinary people at the seaside but with one vital difference, in that it represented the full ethnic range of present day Britain. As well as the elderly English couple, there was a close up study of a Sikh eating an ice-cream, a Ja-maican gentleman with his English wife and children - a very ordinary subject shown in a completely different light.

For details of membership contact Peter Bidwell on 020 8462 7306.

BROMLEY ART SOCIETY

A lively talk with slides will be given by Roy Stringer, Chairman of Bromley Art Society on Some Modern Art' on Friday, March 8 at the Verrall Hall, United Reform Church, 20 Widmore Road, Bromley (Glades End) at 8pm.

Everyone is welcome to attend, members free visitors £1.

ST GEORGE'S BECKENHAM WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

ST George's will be celebrating the Queen's Golden Jubilee this year with a special lunch for all members. We have a very full and varied pro-gramme planned, apart from our weekly swimming and darts. We have already been to the theatre in January, and have several more arranged for the future, as well as trips to TV studios to watch programmes being recorded. We have coffee mornings, outings to many interesting places such as museums and historical houses etc.

at our institute meetings we have speakers on a wide range of subjects as well as quizzes, demonstrations, social mornings and an annual Tom-bola which is enjoyed by everybody.

Our meetings are held at the Public Hall in Beckenham on the second Wednesday of each month from 10am to 12 noon. New members are al-ways welcome so why not come along and join us.

THE HAYES PARISH CHURCH SOCIAL PLAYERS

THE Hayes Parish Church Social Players held their annual Pantomime at Hayes Village Hall on February 1 and 2, 2002.

This year Aladdin' was chosen and the 27 adult cast presented a most enjoyable, delightful and successful three performances.

They were joined by 19 village children from Hayes Parish Church and Hayes Free Church who added so much to the enjoyment and success of the Pantomime, which was produced and directed by Jeff Blyth and written by Carol Page.

The dedication and the time given by all concerned is worthy of the highest praise and admiration. All the profit from the pantomime will go to children's charities: Bromley Portage and Demelza House Children's Hospice.

ST MARY AND ST PAUL CRAY WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

OUR speaker this month was Barbara Stevens. Her subject was Amazing Presidents of Downe WI'. This institute was formed in 1919, hearing about these presidents of the past and mixed with humour, made it very interesting. Some were presented at Court, one had been presented with the MBE and one lady had served as president for 23 years.

We have a varied programme planned for this year, and would welcome new members, perhaps you would like to come as a visitor. We meet on the second of each month at 2pm at the Moffatt Hall, St Mary Cray. For further information please ring. 020 8302 3409.

BECKENHAM & BROMLEY NATIONAL TRUST CENTRE

JEAN Martin's illustrated lecture on Renee Lalique the famous French glass and jewellery designer was enthusiastically received by a large audience in the Civic Centre on February 13.

Born in 1860, Lalique was trained in the School of Decorative Arts In Paris where he lived for most of his life, combining a shop to display his glass and jewellery with the family home upstairs, his last house when he had made his fortune was in the expensive and prestigious Place de Vendome.

His factories were at Rambouillet and in Alsace where he employed 500 men. His jewellery combined enamel, glass, gold, diamonds and other precious stoned.

Based on subtle colours his designs were taken from nature, wasps, dragonflies, wild birds and peacocks, flowers, fruit and trees were some of his favourite subjects.

His necklaces, collars, pendants and brooches were at first heavy in appearance but Lalique lived through the Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Japa-nese periods and he adapted his designs accordingly. Becoming accepted in society, he numbered among his patrons, Sarah Bernhardt, Queen Al-exandra and the Duchess of Windsor and among his collaborators Cartier and Bouchier. Even more individual was his work in glass, as he experimented in different ways of making, designing and using glass. There were vases, bowls, dishes and candlesticks in a multiplicity of designs and colours, he also saw the use of glass in lampshades, tables, clocks and church decorations.

Among his major commissions were decorations for the liner The Normandy and for the first Orient Express.

The next meeting will be held in the Civic Centre at 8pm on March 13 when Margaret Weare will give a talk on Ellen Terry and Smallhythe Place. Information about the centre is available on 020 8650 9041 or visit the website at www.nationaltrust.org.uk/assocs/beckenhambromley

CHELSFIELD EVENING WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

AFTER our President for this coming year, Jenny Groves, welcomed us to the meeting Jean Burgess, the secretary, followed with the reading of the minutes for the last meeting in 2001. The various documents were signed and the first meeting for this year began.

Our speaker was a lady who is in fact a member of Chelsfield WI, Miss Joyce Cook, and she gave a very interesting and amusing talk including audience participation on her work as a speech therapist. This has been her work for over thirty years full time.

Joyce describes her work as ENT. Which includes head and neck problems of which a large number of these are cancer related.

Voice cases are not usually malignant. Some causes of this problem are stress related maybe in the home or at work or maybe bereavement.

Voice is divided into three section: 1 - Excitor = air from the lungs. 2 - Vibrator = movement of vocal chords and 3. - Resonator = use of various space, gives extra volume and change of tone. The talk was then followed by (as Joyce called it) audience participation.

As the heating in the hall was not working, we were allowed to keep our coats on for the exercises which were: Hands on body between waist and chest, breath in feel the stomach move inwards (not all the ladies could feel this!) inhale making the stomach push out again. Its easier to feel this than it is to describe it. We were then asked to add various sounds to this type of breathing, much laughter was couples with the exercises and the evening turned into a very jolly time and we all warmed up in spite of not having any heating.

To sum up our talk, the subject was about a very serious and sad problem and we were made aware of this by our speaker by she also gave it a lighter side. I think all the ladies enjoyed our very own speaker Joyce Cook.

I must add that at the end of the talk Joyce gave her own vote of thanks. A job she is very familiar with as she is always chosen to do this on be-half of our WI. Bit I doubt if she has ever had the courage to thank anyone else the way she ended her talk this evening - completely honest.

ASSOCIATION OF MEN OF KENT AND KENTISH MEN

BROMLEY'S Chief Librarian, Mr Barry Walkinshaw, was the speaker at the February meeting of the Bromley and Beckenham branch of the Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men.

Mr Walkinshaw presides over 15 public libraries throughout the borough, run through a structure based on Central Library in the town centre, and holding 5,000,000 items and handling 3,000,000 transactions a year.

There is an annual budget of £4.5 million pounds of which £825,000 is spent of stock. About £650,000 is recouped through fines and hiring fees.

The service is being constantly improved to encourage learning among all age groups with the introduction of new projects relating to a variety of subjects. Modern information technology is being increasingly used to facilitate this.

Thursday, March 7 is the date of the next branch meeting at 7.45pm in the Methodist Church Rooms, College Road, Bromley.

New members and visitors are welcome, contact Miss H Gribble on 020 8857 5452.

GREEN ST GREEN AFTERNOON WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

THE February meeting on February 18 took place at the Greenwood Centre at Green St Green at 2pm. Our speaker, Mr W MacDonald, gave an interesting talk on the history of spectacles.

Members were surprised to learn that the earliest lens found was dated 2000BC and subsequently learnt that the beginnings of modern specta-cles took place in Mesopotamia. We were allowed to handle pairs and were asked to guess how they were used, we rarely had the correct answer as we handed spectacles that were reversible, those for wearing in the first steam trains which protected the eyes from smuts from the engine and several pairs with extending arms which were for people who wore wigs amongst a host of others.

The vote of thanks was given by Mrs Queenie Skeffington. Our next meeting will be March 18 when Miss J Hendy will be telling us about the Neptune Coastal Campaign. We had pleasure in welcoming a visitor and visitors are always welcome at our meetings.

KESTON WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

HAVE you ever wondered what happens when you are chosen to appear on a television programme? Linda Steward told us of her experiences when her son persuaded her to fill in the form to go on Masterchef'.

In 1992 she was a farmer's wife living in the Vale of York, working on the farm, but insisting that she watched Masterchef each week, she said, as many have, "I could do much better than that" she sent off the form and waited. There were 2000 applicants, eight were chosen from each re-gion, her menu was for honest British food! She went to Middlesborough for a non TV round and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Linda had to submit menus and timings for each round. She was taken to London by car. On arrival at the studios they were shown the kitch-ens, the competitors have to cook a three course meal for four in two and a half hours costing no more that £30.

You get used to the cameras being there. The judges for the first round were John Harvey-Jones and Jocelyn Dimbleby. She got through that round successfully and was a finalist. She didn't win the final and had said she would donate any prize money to her charity.

A new programme was going out from Pebble Mill Good Morning' with Anne and Nick and Linda was invited to do a cookery spot. She went five times.

As her marriage had broken up she needed to earn her own living and went on a six month course in catering. After a period of working on a cas-tle in Scotland she was asked to do a two week holiday cover for the Duke of York. She had a wonderful time as he was so easy to look after. He recommended her to the Duchess.

Exciting things can happen to ordinary people! We look forward to hearing more from Linda. Our meetings are held on the second Wednesday in the month at Keston Hall at 2pm.

PETTS WOOD WOMEN'S INSTITUTE

PETTS Wood Women's Institute started the year with a talk on Collecting Antique's followed by a Roadshow where our speaker Brenda Latham gave information and valuations on items brought along by members. The evening was a great success and will be repeated in future programmes.

In February, two teachers from the London Borough of Bromley, Traveller's Education Service gave a talk on the storysacks they are trying to make to help traveller children in the Borough improve their reading skills. A storysack includes a book, story tape, characters (usually in the form of soft toys), accessories to help act out the story and educational prompt cards asking questions about the story and characters. A selection of books were on display and we were invited to take a book home and make a storysack. This offer was taken up by the majority of our members who are now involved in creating these reading aids. Petts Wood W.I has already completed other storysack projects presenting a local school and Li-brary with these teaching aids. Following a tea break we continued the evening with a beetle drive. Many of our members had not encountered this form of entertainment before but our Secretary quickly explained the rules and we all thoroughly enjoyed playing this game.

Petts Wood W.I. will this year be organising the district Art & Craft events and with the emphasis on Art we will arrange outings to Art Galleries and Museums.

For our March meeting we welcome back local nurseryman George Puddefoot who will be speaking about Fuchsias. He is a very entertaining speaker and usually brings plants from his nursery for sale.

Visitors are welcome to attend our meetings, just come along to the Towncourt Room, Memorial Hall, Petts Wood on the first Thursday of each month at 7.30 pm. For further information contact the Secretary 01689 824474 or Programme Secretary 01689 831277.

March 5, 2002 13:30