Arlingham WI with Richard Burton with a humourous talk entitled ‘Are you being served?’

THE meeting was opened by Chris with a variety of activities on offer, including a visit to the Friends Meeting house in Cirencester, clay pigeon shooting, a paper cutting workshop, a mid-week walk around Cranham, the Denman Federation weekend and crafts for Christmas.

A working party was set up to discuss the initial design for a hanging and volunteers requested to help with the programme of events for next year.

Our speaker this month was Richard Burton with a humourous talk entitled ‘Are you being served?’

As you might imagine, having the same name as a famous actor did get him into a spot of bother.

One night with a friend they managed to blag their way into a club and signed the members’ book only to be called back by the bouncer for using fictitious names.

Luckily he could prove who he was, as could his friend Robin Hood; that did make us giggle.

The talk centred around Richard’s long career in sales named after the famous TV programme when he realised that during his career he had worked with lookalikes for all the main characters.

His choice of career was inspired by three people he met, firstly by a Sikh salesman who visited the street where his parents lived and pulled out a variety of embroidered textiles, much to the delight of his mother and her neighbours.

The second salesman was in charge of menswear in the draper’s shop where he was taken each year to buy school uniform.

Richard admired the fact his mother trusted him implicitly.

The third salesman sold food and came to the house in a blue van.

The reliability of the ordering system impressed Richard even if the man did have an annoying habit of saying 'thank you' after every item.

Not wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps as a gardener, he managed to get a job in the carpets and linoleum department of a store in Taunton and after deductions for travel and expenses was left with just 14 shillings (around 74p).

Every three months on ‘Moving Monday’ he would be moved to a different department.

One of his greatest challenges as a young boy was in soft furnishings where with another sixteen year old they had to cut the fabric for 150 pairs of curtains for a big order – no mean feat when you have to make sure the pattern matches!

I’m pretty sure that Richard could have entertained us all night with his tales but we had to stop at some point for refreshments, this month provided by Chris and Chrissie.

The competition for something purple was won by Chris G with a cup and saucer, second place went to Linda with a box and in third place was Chris P with a ring.

August is our holiday month with a visit to Acton Court instead of our usual meeting.

Please join us in September.

We meet at the village hall at 7.30pm on the second Thursday of the month and welcome visitors and new members.