Some years ago I lived in a small Wiltshire village with my husband and two sons. It was idyllic in some ways and seemed to be paving the way for the lifestyle I wanted.
I've always been involved in community groups such as the PTA or the church groups so it was not an unusual event for me to be invited to the Church Fete committee. The venue for the meeting was the Manor House in the village, and as we sat there around the large breakfast table resting our note pads on copies of the Horse and Hounds, the meeting seemed to be progressing in its normal way.
The group consisted of the owners of the Manor House, the vicar and his wife and a few older stalwarts of the village which included various retired military men and their memsahibs, who punctuated those rural counties. As a member of the 'also rans', I, along with the School Secretary, certainly occupied the second rank whose job was to support the choices made by the hierarchy and to do the donkey work when required.
The meeting was discussing the advertising strategy for the annual fete and the possibility of posters being positioned on the roads into the village heralding the village fete and its attractions ... I'm sure we've seen them all .... They are aimed to catch the eye of passing motorists ... and display such statements as ' Village Fete here today', 'All the fun of the Fair' and 'Cream Teas at the Manor House', and there seemed to be some chatter about the practical application of displaying those posters. Suddenly, aiming to solve the display problem, came a statement from the end of the end of a table
Commander Taylor RN (retired) stood to attention and declared loudly in a voice that should only be used on the Poop deck and I might say, with some pride. "I have a rather large erection, the size of a house".
The shocked silence was palpable and as everyone seemed to fleetingly stare open mouthed, my colleague and I retreated into an episode of 'Carry On Village Fete', Before we burst into uncontrollable laughter, we glanced around the table for some kind of action that would bring the proceedings back to normality. The vicar seemed to be ignoring it completely, a few of the ladies of the table were looking at Commander Taylor in a new, admiring light but my friend and I lost the plot completely giggling uncontrollably and as the majority of the group had decided, if they understood the double entendre, that they were going to ignore it, our laughter landed in the same social realm as giggling at funerals. I think the collective decision to cover over it made it worse, we were both red in the face and holding our cheeks, no reader! don't go there again - the cheeks on our face, I was pressing my thumb nail into my finger in an effort to stop, my friend had decided to drop pens so that she could climb under the table and control herself, but the shaking from both our bodies was making it more and more difficult to return to a dignified silence.
The vicar bought the meeting to order, gazing over his glasses at us to ensure that we knew he meant us to cease, and gradually after a few throat clearances, we began to breathe slowly.
This would have been the end of the story but after five minutes of trying to work out how we attach the notices to Commander Taylors impressive erection and a few smaller decisions having been made, someone else decided to bring us back to the realms of Sid James and Barbara Windsor.
The talk had moved on to the minutiae of the stalls - bric a brac, catch the rat and the cakes, when a really annoying busy body in the village, I forget her name, declared with no shame that if anyone wanted to store their home made cakes that they were very welcome to store them in her back passage.
To which ... meeting over.... plot officially lost........
