THE FIRST meeting of 2018 was held on February 6 at the Community Centre.

Sadly Patricia Allen-Armitage was unwell and so the meeting was chaired by our vice president, Judy Golding. She began by wishing everyone a Happy New Year

Members were asked for ideas as to a venue for the Christmas meal, as the committee will not be doing a buffet. The AGM will be followed by coffee, tea and cake and will not include a meal. Members present agreed to donate the funds of the monthly raffle to funds and have a small donated prize.

Anyone interested is welcome to join a walk about historic Dursley. Those interested are to meet at 11am on February 20 by Barclays Bank.

The speaker was Lorraine Campbell on the topic "Only Fools and Corsets".

Lorraine gave an interesting and amusing account of her time as a supporting actress – an extra - in the 1980's. She worked on various TV programmes such as Casulty and Only Fools and Horses. She had four main roles - policewoman, nurse, parlour maid or peasant. Being cast for a role depended on age, hair length, height etc. rather than acting ability.

It was of interest to learn that the programme was shot in silence, with music and chat added on afterwards.

After becoming a mother, Lorraine changed to voice work as this did not involve such long hours, and still does this line of work

She began as “seen but not heard” and now is “heard but not seen”.

The next meeting is on March 6 when Mike Cooper will talk about being an Olympic Volunteer. Anyone is welcome to come along.

After coffee Matt took us on a whirlwind tour of his photography. Starting with macro photographs of frogs and geckos, he moved on to photographing models in a studio.

These were not conventional images but almost abstract interpretations of the human form with UV light and paint poured over the models.

It was about this time that Matt decoded to carry on his own photographic route and ignore the advice of judges of photographic competitions. I’m glad he did. These images were exciting, stimulating and original.

Matt describes himself as a “petrolhead” and has gained reputation for photographing cars. Today he is invited to motoring events with the offer of free tickets.

Free tickets, often with a free pint of beer, also come to Matt with his invitations to photograph rock bands. Several of his images have subsequently appeared as publicity material for the bands.

Finally, completely outside his normal range of work, Matt was asked to photograph some boxing tournaments. Whether you approve of the sport or not, you cannot deny the drama of the images which Matt has captured in high-contrast monochrome.