After the usual singing of Jerusalem and distribution of birthday cards we enjoyed an entertaining talk by Mrs. Pat Clark (ex Basso).

Pat had a very novel idea of having three bags of mementoes from her many and varied travels from which she took out items and gave amusing background stories to their acquisition.

Many items were hand-crafted by the local people and varied in materials from a gorgeous elephant's head in Malachite to enormous African bean pods.

Some were obviously made by very skilled people - for example a jade ball within balls carved from a single piece and an Egyptian fertility god made from Basalt.

Some of the items were really funny, particularly two gorillas complete with unpeeled bananas.

Pat was warmly thanked by Verona Wyatt for her entertaining anecdotes and confessed the only two countries she has not visited were Russia and Japan - otherwise she had souvenirs of nearly every other country in the world.

The next meeting will be a members afternoon on August 19 when we will have a social afternoon with a quiz.