At our supper meeting on Monday 14 November 2016 we had an informative presentation given by John Lee about “South Bristol Youth” (SBY), a charity using a new approach to working with young people in south Bristol. We learnt how and why the charity was formed, what it had achieved in its three years of working and the hopes for the future. South Bristol is a diverse part of the city that has benefitted from significant capital investment over the past few years. However there are large areas of deprivation, relatively low but recently improving levels of educational achievement and the second lowest level of participation in higher education in England. SBY has brought together six secondary schools, community organisations and the two universities in the city to tackle the lack of progress that many young people in south Bristol make. The schools work with

On October 10, Professor Ronald Hutton gave a talk at the supper meeting. Professor Hutton is Deputy Dean of the Arts faculty at the University of Bristol, Commissioner for the Heritage Society and Chair of its Committee for the award of Blue Plaques, as well as Vice President for Life of the Sealed Knot Society. He has written 16 books on Early Modern Britain and Pagan Myths and Legends. He is an inspiring and very well informed speaker and gave us insights into the origins and traditions of Halloween, and discussed the facts, theories and mystiques which have been the subject of academic research and debate between prominent historians over many years. The traditions of Halloween go back to early Celtic Britain and to the ceremonies for celebrating the Dead at the beginning of the winter season. The idea of Trick and Treat comes from America

At our supper meeting on Monday 12th of September, the speaker was Anne Woolley a member of SI Weston-super-Mare, who had a remarkable story to tell us of her adoption of a Vietnamese little girl called Tam. Anne had 3 little boys and she and her husband wanted to complete her family with a little girl. She saw the terrible, but now infamous picture of the little child running naked down the road having been burnt by napalm, and decided at that moment to adopt a Vietnamese child. She then related how she surmounted tremendous obstacles with great tenacity with the help of contacts that she made in Vietnam, and a campaign mounted by the Daily Mail editor David English to bring orphaned children to the UK and give them a fresh start in life. Anne recalled the terrible air crash in which many of the