Rotary Club

THE Rotary Club is organising a fashion show to raise funds for Hospice at Home Aberystwyth Volunteers and the Wales Air Ambulance.The event will be held at the Marine Hotel, Aberystwyth on Wednesday, 20 April (7.30pm) when fashion boutique L’Armoire, from Llanidloes, will be exhibiting its spring collection.Tickets are £10 and include a glass of wine served by Rotary Club members. Models from L’Armoire will be presenting the boutique’s spring collection and other items.John Harries, president of the club, said: “We are looking forward to holding the fashion show and we’re delighted to be able to support two such worthy organisations as Hospice at Home Aberystwyth Volunteers and Wales Air Ambulance, both of whom provide essential services in our local community.“We very much hope therefore that the fashion show will be well supported. Tickets are available from the Hospice at Home Aberystwyth Volunteers Shop in Pier Street, at L’Armoire in Llanidloes, or by calling 01970 626925.Laura Thomas of L’Armoire, said: “Over the last six years we have helped raise funds for many charitable causes – to date a total of well over £50,000 has been raised by our events, such as this one at Aberystwyth, for a range of charities including Macmillan Nurses, Marie Curie Cancer Care, NSPCC and very many others. “We are very pleased that we can help make a difference by raising money for so many worthwhile causes. I’m particularly grateful to all my dear friends, models and staff who have helped raise this amazing amount of money”.

Probus

THE latest meeting of the club had an intriguing title: ‘The Exotic Sex Life of Crops – How We Came to Eat the Plants We Do’. The speaker, Prof John Warren of Aberystwyth University’s IBERS department explained that the first part of the title was to attract attention and that most of the plants we eat have rather boring sex lives. As author of a recent book on the nature of crops, John’s main intention was to explain the reasons for our dietary choices.John started with the startling statistic that we could eat most of the half a million flowering plants in existence but in practice we eat only about 1-2 per cent of them. Why not the others?It is sometimes said that if bees succumb to disease, we would have little or nothing to eat, but John said this was not true. Of the 16 main human foodstuffs, only one was dependent on bees for fertilisation. Without bees, our diet would be less varied but not significantly less nutritious.The reasons for not eating the others may be that some plants (and indeed animals) were easier to domesticate than others. Often these were in Europe. The remainder were then ignored.John was thanked for his talk and fascinating stories by David Hopper.The next meeting will be the AGM on 27 April and the speaker will be Erwyd Howells.The Probus Club welcomes new members, both men and women. Further information can be obtained from the secretary, John Andrews (01970-358095) or from the website, www.aberprobus.org.uk

Postcard club

DR RICHARD Edwards gave a fascinating illustrated talk entitled ancient maps of Great Britain to the members of the club at the St David’s Club on Tuesday, 5 April. Dr Edwards described how the 14th century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (c.85-165) had produced his Prima Europe Tabula and the emerging understanding of latitude and longtidude. He described how this knowledge developed along with the need to accurately portray land boundaries and coastlines in printed form. The chronological journey through the centuries was illustrated through the works of the famous 16th century cartographer John Speed 1542-1629 and his contemporary Saxton con-tinuing through the colourful maps of the 17th century map-maker Blaeu of the Netherlands. The methods of producing printing plates as wood-cuts, copper and steel were described. His talk included a display of original examples of many fine historical maps produced over a period of 600 years clearly showing the contribution made towards the understanding of the world’s land masses by those ancient map-makers.The next meeting of the Postcard Club will be on 3 May at 2pm at the Ceredigion Museum when Mary Turner-Lewis will talk about and demonstrate selected historical items from the Margaret Evans Aberystwyth Yesterday collection.

Aberystwyth & District Floral Society

MEMBERS and guests crowded Llanfarian Village Hall on the evening of 15 March for a spring workshop tutored by Julie Amies Carter, a florist from Aberaeron. Julie demonstrated how to create a design using birch twigs entwined to make a large and small nest as the foundation of an arrangement suitable for Easter with spring flowers and foliage, and little quail’s eggs in the smaller nest. Everyone got busy to interpret this in their own way with stunning results whilst refreshments were served. When everyone was finished, Julie then made a two placement design using a large piece of driftwood and a colourful selection of plant material. The meeting concluded with the customary raffle.On Tuesday, 19 April, Adrian Cooke from Pembroke will be making a popular return to the club as demonstrator for the evening with the title Let’s Go Dutch.The meeting starts at 7.30pm as usual in Llanfarian Village Hall. The members’ competition will be a contrast of colour. A warm welcome awaits everyone.

Aberystwyth Chess Club

CHESS club member and Aberhosan resident Julie van Kemenade (pictured) is the new Welsh Ladies Chess Champion. She took the title as the highest-placed women player in the Welsh Chess Championships in Cardiff over Easter in which her husband Rudy also competed.