Left to right: Deb Arrowsmith, Hazel Allen, Myra Ford, and Jenny Braithwaite. Photo: Courtesy of the Quakerleles.
Eye - 04 October 2024
Q-Eye delves into the archive, with a bumper car based reflection from 1935, and finds musical Friends plucking the ukelele together in Faringdon Meeting
Quakerleles
Friends who find themselves fleet of finger on the strings of a ukelele have come together as a lively group, called the Quakerleles!
Deb Arrowsmith gave Eye some insights into how the group got going: ‘The Quakerlele band is an outreach initiative from Faringdon Meeting inspired by Jenny Braithwaite’s excellent beginners ukelele classes.
‘We are encouraging Quakers from surrounding Meetings to participate in monthly rehearsals. We even have Quakers further afield wanting to take part remotely!
‘We play a mix of folk, traditional and novelty songs with lots of sing-along numbers – providing the audience with songsheets and percussion instruments so together we all make a joyful noise!’
Myra Ford told Eye: ‘So far our performances have included an Oxford and Swindon Area Meeting, a spiritual nurture/pastoral care weekend at Charney Manor, a peace picnic, and, informally, in the Burford Meeting House garden when it was open during the annual Levellers’ Day commemoration. We’re only just getting started!’
Gratitude
Eye thanks Peter Smith, of Norfolk and Waveney Area Meeting, for sharing the things he feels grateful for: ‘Cuddles with Gill (my spouse) before breakfast; cuddle with GiGi (our cat) after lunch.’
On this day
‘WFH’ may mean ‘work from home’ nowadays, but it’s the only identification for the writer of a piece in the Friend of 4 October 1935 called ‘In praise of bumps’.
Eye senses that they may have had more than one frustrating experience on a Quaker committee!
‘With my back turned to the sea and sunshine I watched, fascinated, the unique attraction, the world’s greatest novelty, the electric bumping cars. Twenty of them, each holding one person, careered over a circular area… All ages were represented in this friendly arena, bent on making fresh contacts, content for the moment to see themselves and others as absurd citizens of an absurd world.
‘A stout, bald-headed gentleman, who looked like a German, was so obviously pleased with himself that others were impelled to collide with him. He took the bumps with the greatest good humour. Children of set purpose got in the way of their elders and betters. The faces of grim spinsters relaxed for a moment before the impact of youth…
‘This was a true democracy. Each, moreover, was aware of the folly of the other. None could afford to stand on their dignity in such ridiculous vehicles, which at any moment might be turned by others to a different point of the compass.
‘What an excellent idea it would be if groups or Friends, committees, whole meetings even, could be driven in char-à-bancs to such an arena where they would meet before and after their deliberations!
‘A social cup of tea, with its accompanying hand-shakings, affords no such vent for the petty animosities which needlessly act as grit in the smooth running of our essential machinery. We want to shake more than a hand. We want to shake the whole man…
‘It is impossible, without being gravely misunderstood, to upset a cup of tea over the Friend who, in season and out of season, obstructs – and from the highest motives – our dearest schemes. But if we could only bump into him in an electric car, again and again, watching with one eye the sparks on the ceiling and, with the other, the smile of grim, exasperated benevolence on his face, what untold good it would do to us and him!’
Photo: By Markus Distelrath on Pixabay
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