THIS week’s meeting was unusual in that we entertained ourselves for a change rather than bringing in an external speaker.

This innovation had been proposed by Cliff Blackborrow who has long argued that many of us know relatively little about each other.

However, before we got down to this, and inevitably as most of us are naturally garrulous, Phil Bawn shared his latest joke with us, Jim Cox described his supernatural experience, Brian Dutton gave an example of déjà vu and Jeff Jones spoke about his very funny Army days.

Cliff then suggested that we split into groups of five and spend five minutes interrogating each other. He started the ball rolling with his life experiences, including having a meal of half an egg and being called an “Ape-ney Scrubber”. The older ones amongst us knew he referred to a Ha’penny, or Half Penny, whilst the youngest had no idea what a Ha’Penny was!

The conversations on each table got underway and very soon the five minutes were up. Nevertheless, amongst other snippets, we learned about life growing up on the Blenheim estate, about watching ocean going liners departing from Southampton to faraway lands, and about the magnificent RNLI Lifeboat station at Padstow.

And someone even explained what “meretricious sesquipedalianism” means but I’m afraid I wasn’t listening carefully enough!

At the end of the meeting, Jeff Jones commented that being a member of the Probus Club has widened his circle of friends and he enjoys the companionship that membership brings.

We meet every Thursday at 10am at the Evesham Rowing Club's boathouse. Information about us, including our programme of talks, is on our website: www.eveshamprobus.co.uk.

CHRIS DONOUGH