Friendship!! (From Hereford Times)

Friendship!!

3:15pm Thursday 2nd November 2006

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I am delighted to have been added to the blogging team at the Hereford Times and for my first topic I'd like to tell you about a club that I am working on bringing to Herefordshire women. My efforts to bring this club to Hereford is based on a need that most females have and that is to have close female friendships. Since I don't work away from home, I've found I have a shortage of friends here in England and I am hoping that this club will bring me a friend or two or even a half dozen.
Some of you may or may not have heard of the Red Hat Society. This started in the U.S. and spread like wildfire throughout the entire country and is now an International organisation. The founding member had this to say about the club."The Red Hat Society began as a result of a few women deciding to greet middle age with verve, humor and elan. We believe silliness is the comedy relief of life, and since we are all in it together, we might as well join red-gloved hands and go for the gusto together. Underneath the frivolity, we share a bond of affection, forged by common life experiences and a genuine enthusiasm for wherever life takes us next." - Sue Ellen Cooper, Queen Mother
The club itself is based on a poem by Jenny Joseph titled - Warning - When I am an old woman! The text of this poem follows.
Warning - When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple.
By Jenny Joseph.
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells and run my stick along the public railings and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain and pick the flowers in other people's gardens and learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

So here I am trying to start a chapter in Hereford. We are already registered with the home office of The Red Hat Society in California as The Wye's Women of Hereford. We have our own email the_red_hat_society_of_hereford@hotmail.co.uk and I am in the process of building a myspace web page for us at Red Hat Society of Hereford If you are interested in taking part, please either email me at the address shown above or phone me at 01432 353171.
Many thanks - Cindi Read