Pixes, Elves, Kelpies & Gnomes

“I promise that I will do my best”

The community centre mass drone

Voiced boredom at Brown Owl’s behest

A pack in brown berets and yellow ties

Dress pockets bulging with string and ten pences

Ready for non-existent emergencies

The most exciting Brownie moment

Was camp (not even tents) at Sleaford

And packed-in dormitory torment

Though I yearned to be a pack sixer

I did my best not to be noticed

Too introvert to be a mixer

Other girls did their best to be nasty

Even though they had promised to be good

Their slights were underhand and crafty

Lines of brown and yellow suppressed howls

Shuffling around the dusty parquet floor

Nurtured by not the wisest of owls.

Sarah Miller Walters

Visit my collection of poems inspired by 1940s problem pages

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Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch - The Book!

I have now put together a book to accompany this blog, featuring all the best bits and much more besides, about the development and use of village halls over the past century. It costs £1.29 for a Kindle download and £3.99 for a printed version. Here's the blurb: "Enter any village hall and look at the noticeboard. The range of activities taking place these days is enough to keep anyone entertained. Cinema evenings, keep fit classes, scouts, Women’s Institute, St John’s Ambulance, lunch clubs, support groups - all keeping the physical and spiritual on the straight and narrow. Where would we be without the village hall? What a marvellous innovation, and one that seems to grow in importance as we realise that we have lost sight of community somewhat, and need to nurse it back to life. You might, if you were in a particularly philosophical mood while hanging around the vestibule, wonder where and how it all began." English village halls have been a fixture of our lands...

The Ode to the Village Hall

I hope that some of my own poems that I have published on this blog have raised a smile of recognition. But I’m not the first to write poetry inspired by village halls. Back in 1936, the Warwick Advertiser published an article about a Mr Smith, who had written a poem about the village hall at Hatton. This was so well received by friends and family, that he had 401 copies printed, and he sold them for a pound apiece. The profits were divided between the church fund and the working men’s club fund. Hatton Village Hall - the charming inspiration Happily for us, the Warwick Advertiser saw fit to publish Mr Smith’s acrostic: T his grand village hall which can scare be surpassed H as been built by one to remember those passed E ver thoughtful of others, kind friend of us all V ery ready to help and obey duty’s call I n summer or winter, in sunshine or rain L ending a hand without seeking to gain L ooking after the sick and helping the weak A nd a kind cheery s...

Bogarde's Beginnings

Village halls played a part in the early careers of many actors – some of them becoming world renowned. Who knows just how many household names first got a taste for the luvvie life at the local amateur dramatic society. Dirk Bogarde was certainly one of them, because he wrote about his experiences at Newick Village Hall, near Lewes. Dirk’s mother made the acquaintance of a Mrs Cox, whose husband was said to own the village hall. Dirk became good friends with the Coxs’ daughter and the family took to him, allowing him to indulge his teenage ambition of becoming a playwright. He wrote, and starred in “The Man on the Bench”, supported by Nerine Cox. It was performed around the time that Nazi Germany had marched into Austria – but a sparse audience with a lot on their minds nevertheless received it well. Mr Cox offered Dirk his first leading role shortly afterwards with the Newick Amateur Drama Society – Raleigh in R.C. Sherriff’s “Journey’s End”. “It was a tremendous ...

Woods Ware China at the Serving Hatch

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