October Meeting - Update

“It’s Hilary Devey”

I can’t believe how quickly this year is going. It doesn’t seem like two minutes since our January meeting and here we are with 47 sleeps till Christmas. Halloween had come and gone and, in just a couple of days it was going to be Bonfire Night. I was shattered. Having had a particularly nasty bout of flu, I was feeling wiped out and knackered and the amount of make-up I was having to apply in the morning in order to not scare small children was going to rival Boots.Stress, illness and just a general feeling of tiredness had also affected the other witches, but we were all looking forward to a great evening and Dani was back with us !!!

After a frantic journey, we made it to the Weavers in Golcar. The Weavers has been a successful restaurant for 40 years and has recently undergone a refurbishment. The conversion is stunning, with a cosy seating area for the bar and an ample, luxury space for diners. Amanda particularly coveted the union jack chairs and I had my eye on the very funky wine coolers!

Even though we arrived late, the staff kindly let us have the early bird. The starters were lovely. We had the Yorkshire Ham Terrine, Salmon Gravadlax and the spring roll (not all at the same time!) The food was beautifully presented and very tasty. Conversation turned to new phones, our childhood cuddly toys (Ken the Dog!!) and the fact that Pringles have a new flavour. The mains arrived promptly after – Fish and Chips, Stilton and Leek Strudel and mushrooms and clams. I had the strudel and it was yummy and very light, I didn’t feel over-faced by it.  Catherine was in danger of not finishing her main as we had a particularly meaty conversation about eyeballs which only ended when we realised Catherine had gone a peculiar shade of green!!! The desserts looked particularly yummy, and we settled on sticky toffee pudding with butterscotch sauce and custard. Thse were delicious. Dani decided on a coffee and it arrived with a homemade truffle. As Danielle doesn’t like chocolate, she tried to divide her truffle into 4 pieces with a spoon for us to share. 

James, our waiter, seeing the fact that a very expensive truffle was threatening  to fly across the restaurant into another diner’s lap, offered to bring us a truffle each. We all thought this was a lovely gesture and agreed that the service for the evening as well as the food had been really great. 

And so to our theme, I had asked the ladies to each read a book from the Big Read list composed by the public in 2005. We all picked very different books and then to compose our own top 10s.  The books we opted to read were Good Omens by Terry Pratchett (Phoebe), Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer (Amanda), 1984 by George Orwell (me), Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Catherine) and Perfume by Patrick Suskind(Danielle). Years ago on the Fast Show, there used to be a character who presented a jazz show. He dressed in a black polo neck, corduroy jacket and every now and then would turn to the camera and go “nice”. We all became the female version of this character during our reviews , with heads on one side, thoughtful faces, intellectually placed fingers and saying “Interesting”a lot. But do you know what? It proper was. We had all picked books we would not normally read and for Catherine, had picked a book she had been meaning to read for ages and ended up loving. Our own top 10’s were a real mixed bag and it was brilliant seeing what my fellow witches loved to read. 

We decided to take some pictures of the lot of us. When we handed the camera to James, we did not realise that we were in the presence of a photographic genius! Catherine was sat on a high backed chair with her coat on the back. The angle of the picture taken by her made her look like she had shoulders worthy of an American linebacker! Amanda took one look at the photo and said “It’s Hilary Devey” from Dragon’s Den. Suddenly all the stresses of the past month were forgotten as we all completely lost the plot, laughing so hard, with tears streaming down our faces. I laughed so hard tears, my sides ached the next morning. Priceless!!

And so ended another brilliant evening in lovely company, roll on the next one!!





Can you spot Hilary?