Photos clockwise from top left: the Narrator, Pirate Pete, Father Bear, and Baby Bear. Courtesy of East Cheshire AM.
Eye - 25 November 2022
Q Eye’s greatest hits
An invitation
These ‘greatest hits’ are here to give you a flavour of what Eye has been (see 4 November), and to inspire you, our lovely readers, to reach out with stories and pictures you’d like to share in future editions. Let’s get to know each other in the things that are light-hearted!
Oh no they didn’t!
One Area Meeting’s thigh-slapping efforts to ensure that festive frolics weren’t derailed by Covid had Eye marvelling at their creativity.
Andrew Backhouse, of Wilmslow Meeting, set the scene: ‘East Cheshire Area Meeting (AM) has organised a pantomime trip for many years, with free tickets for children and preceded by a shared lunch and games. Sometimes as many as sixty people have taken part.’ Covid restrictions appeared to prevent this seasonal shindig, until old traditions combined with surprising talents to create something unique.
‘Our AM clerk grew up in Sutton Meeting, where they had a long tradition of the Meeting staging a pantomime of its own… So the AM clerk did not think it would be beyond her capacity to write something if enough others were interested.
‘It was easiest to start with some familiar bits – Hansel and Gretel, Goldilocks and the Three Bears – and twisting them to include every local Quaker Meeting, Covid links, and much more gender flexibility.’
The call went out for volunteers, and Friends came to know one another in unexpected ways: ‘The AM has a regular performer with the Poynton Gilbert and Sullivan Society who loves being a pirate (and has the costume to boot)… Another member is the organiser of a children’s theatre company… Others would write songs, play instruments, suggest audience participation ingredients, and one could give the script rhyme and bounce.’ Add in a dash of technical wizardry and sprinkle four young people in lead roles with fairy dust, and the stage was set.
Over seventy people gathered on 2 January to enjoy the result: ‘Hansel and Grettilocks meeting the Three Bears became A Bubble in the Woods. From being led into the woods to find food as there were no school dinners, a gingerbread house became the home for Nan t’witch and her Crew. The three bears had Quaker oats on the table… so of course they were all Quakers heading for an Area Meeting tea at Farmer Maccle’s field when at one point they are ambushed by Pirate Pete… it is amazing what you can drag into pantomime, with other people providing warm up acts and interludes.’
Friends can see the panto in all its glory at: https://bitly.com/ECAMpanto.
(first published 29 January 2021)
Cracker packers
From chocolate to Tottenham cake traybakes, Quakers have had quite an impact on the nation’s sweet tooth.
Biscuit fans who tuned in to Nigel Slater’s Great British Biscuit on BBC4 [first aired in 2014] will have spied Friends popping up in this culinary sphere, too – though in a less sugary capacity. After all, ‘no discussion of biscuits could be complete without discussion of the savoury biscuit, the cracker’.
The programme goes on to explain: ‘Most of the leading biscuit firms in Britain were run by Quakers. It therefore seems right that the most ardent Quaker firms were making the more abstemious biscuits. One such company was Carr’s of Carlisle.’
Hunter Davies, who is writing a book about the company, added: ‘Jonathan Dodgson Carr was a Quaker. He was tough but he was very benevolent – he tried to look after the workers.’
Hunter flagged up one group of workers in particular, the cracker packers. This group of women, who packed crackers into the wrapping machines, had their own magazine – The Topper Off – which featured one of the earliest first-hand accounts of The Beatles on tour.
As well as probing the historical roots of well-known ‘bickie’ brands, the programme features biscuit anoraks, as avid as any trainspotter; scientists measuring dunkability; and Nigel Slater resorting to breaking the original nautical biscuit with a cannon ball in order to have a nibble.
(first published 10 January 2014)
Appreciating life
A visit to a friend prompted Brenda Claxton, of Bath Meeting, and her husband Ted to take to heart an uplifting suggestion.
Brenda shared with Eye that: ‘Each evening before bed we sit and describe three things that have uplifted us during the day.
‘They turn out to be simple things…
‘Seeing the birds feeding on the nuts outside the kitchen window, the sparrows squabbling…
‘Walking our large black dog Marcus on the cold frosty ground, watching as he chased around full of energy and enthusiasm…
‘Or the glorious sunsets we have had recently, mesmerized as the huge red sun slowly sank below the horizon and then the sky filled with irrigated cloud formations, reflecting the light of the descending sun.
‘Also practical things like the delicious mushroom soup I made for lunch and sitting beside the fire watching the flames. I often think when I cook and make bread, combining a variety of disparate ingredients to produce something completely different, I am partaking in a miracle. Last evening Ted was completely stuck, and then he remembered eating the black grapes, and I can still myself taste them in my mouth, even though it was not my suggestion.
‘I believe thinking and sharing the uplifting things that have happened in the day is a form of prayer, of thanksgiving, gratitude. It seems to change the quality of my sleep and dreams and, hopefully, will slowly change our appreciation of life for the better.’
(first published 3 March 2017)
Two haikus
A haiku is a traditional Japanese three-line poem with seventeen syllables.
Moments in Meeting have inspired Maureen Jewell, of Blue Idol Meeting, to turn her hand to this centuries-old poetic form.
The two haiku are ‘thoughts on our continuing pilgrimage away from the Blue Idol, after eighteen months still undergoing extensive repairs’.
Village hall, strange room,
exiles from our Meeting house
yet we are at home.
Raindrops pattering
accompanying the silence
today’s ministry.
(first published 16 January 2015)
Limerick
At a virtual meeting somewhere
A Friend said he’d shaved off ALL his hair
Over virtual tea
The clerk said: ‘Let’s see!’
And virtually fell off her chair.
Helen Drewery
(first published 19 June 2020)
