NEWSLETTER 6th MARCH 2019
Our AGM and talk on 15th March starts at the normal meeting time of 7.30pm.
This AGM meeting will be a departure from the format of previous years. As numbers coming for the combined AGM + Supper have steadily declined and the provision of the paid supper has become unviable, your committee has arranged something different for 2019. The business part of the meeting will be short, starting at our usual time for talks. It will be followed by a sociable session, when you will be invited to taste food prepared from historic recipes by members of the committee. This is FREE! Soft drinks will be provided but bring your own alcoholic beverages, they may even be historic! There will be short descriptions of the various morsels and their sources, and a fiendish quiz. Come prepared to be surprised, disgusted and entertained by some of what our forebears put in their mouths (Farts of Portingale anybody?)
The business part of this meeting is the chance for you to raise issues and ask questions of the committee. It is also when we elect the 2019-20 committee, and we are keen to recruit new committee members to introduce fresh ideas and energy. The last few years have seen several long-serving members leave the committee and we need to boost our numbers again. If you would like to contribute to how your Group is run, please consider election. Nominations from the floor will be accepted at the AGM.
Report on 15th February Our member Ilona Sekacz gave us The Pit and the Metronome: writing music for Shakespeare, drawing on over 35 years of experience writing award winning music for the theatre, TV, public events and films. After a dramatic introduction enacting an RSC technical rehearsal (during which our microphone had to be abandoned) Ilona described the time-line of writing music for the theatre and for Shakespeare in particular. We learned that Shakespeare often used music to 
emphasise or comment on the action, like the diminishing status of the fanfares and flourishes introducing King Lear’s entrances as his own standing declined. And in the same play the healing property ascribed to string music is used to treat Lear after the battle scene. We still use the phrase “If music be the food of love…” The music and sound in a dramatic production must contribute to the director’s vision, although Ilona acknowledged that actually when writing she believes that the music is, obviously, the most important element of the production! Considerable ingenuity might be required, for instance to accommodate non-singing actors who have songs in their roles, or alternatively, to write new material for accomplished singers, while enhancing the purpose of the production. Ilona illustrated some of the innovative ways she has made sounds, particularly the “prepared piano” when objects are laid on the strings or the strings are abused in various ways to produce new sounds (a Wigmore Hall piano may still contain a steel ball-bearing lost in one such session!). Her own experience as a violinist sometimes influenced her solutions: using an unplugged electric violin to give a thin and tremulous tone in the film Solomon and Gaynor, or a re-tuned three-quarter violin, used by Tony Sher like a ukele as the fool in King Lear. Ilona left us wanting to know more as she tantalisingly skipped through a dozen or so fascinating-looking slides without comment, except that she was running out of time, perhaps appropriately for a talk with metronome in the title. Gill Ashley-Smith led the vote of thanks for Ilona’s insights into a successful professional career, pointing out how little, sometimes, one knows about familiar people in our own community.
Correction: , Tim Newcombe’s talk on the Mills Family of Pillerton Priors is on the 26th April the 4th Friday of the month, not the 12th as in the Programme Card
19 March. Warwickshire Local History: AGM followed by “George Eliot and Warwickshire” by David Paterson. Quaker Meeting House. 7.30 coffee, 8.00pm talk
21 March. Warmington Heritage Group: Tooley’s Boatyard and the Oxford Canal by Matt Armitage, 7.30 Warmington Village Hall.
22 March. Lighthorne History Society: Pittern Villa farm and the Compton Verney Estate Sales by Brian Lewis. 7.30 Lighthorne Village Hall
22 March. Portcullis History Bede and his World, 10.00am – 4.00pm with Dr John Hunt, Hatton Village Hall £40.00
25 March. Marton Local History Group: Leamington Hastings Church Restoration by Brian Cooke, 7.30 Marton Village Hall
18 April. Warmington Heritage Group: Using Old Maps, LIDAR and Metal Detecting to Investigate Ancient Tracks and Byways by Colin Clay and Phillip Taylor. 7.30 Warmington Village Hall
Local History Book
Kineton resident Arno Christiansen has just produced the book of his memoirs based on his experiences in WWII and afterwards. The book is The Barbed Wire Fence and can be ordered from Amazon. The Group heard from Arno in 2007, when he showed his drawings of his life as a PoW and later in the 1940s, including sketches of Ettington Camp. Members will recollect George Lokuciejewski’s descriptions of the same camp when it was the Ettington Polish Resettlement Camp 31, which we heard at our Christmas Treats meeting last year. Arno married a local girl and settled in the village after the war.
KDLHG Committee Matters. At the committee meeting at the Village Hall on 11th February the nomination at the AGM of Ted Crofts as our new Treasurer to was unanimously agreed, with some relief. Peter Waters’ efforts in the interregnum period was recognised and much appreciated. There was discussion about the need to up-date the signatories for bank transactions, and at the same time bring the title the bank uses for the group into line with our actual name.
Bob Bearman reported that, with Gill, he had completed the editing of Peter Ashley-Smith’s articles and David Beaumont had provided the photographs. It was agreed to go ahead with printing 400 copies of the book, initially as a print-only version, with an on-line version, at a reduced price, in the future.
David Freke reported on the progress of proposals for providing space for the group’s archive in the Village Hall. Plans have been prepared for approval of the Village Hall Association Users Committee and estimates for the proposed work are being obtained.
Arrangements for the AGM were discussed and a small working party formed to undertake the necessary actions, (Isobel Gill, Catherine Petrie, Claire Roberts, Ilona Sekacz).
Steve Gill announced his decision to stand down from the committee at the 2019 AGM.
The new committee will meet at 7.30pm on April 29th 2019, at 5 Church Houses, Manor Lane, by kind invitation of Catherine Petrie
DF 06.03. 2019