Taffy

You know he's a bit of a character already, don't you?

Today we were privileged to have Taffy Thomas MBE, the UK's first Laureate for Storytelling. He had been booked to talk to our junior school this morning and one of our Social Club members had been wise enough to say "Why don't we ask him to be our guest speaker in the afternoon?"

Well, 38 years ago, at the age of 36, he had a stroke and we know how life-changing that can be! However now, he has no use of his left arm, but he turned to storytelling as a form of speech therapy. There is no hesitation in his speech now!

He was invited to an event that required him to wear a tailcoat. A tale coat, he thought and had a Newcastle fabric designer hand paint the subjects of his tales onto fabric for his £6,000 coat (and that price would be some years ago). It certainly impressed our late Queen!

Read about him on Wiki, if you wish. Just amazing!

Now I was serving teas today for the first time but, other people helped out and I managed to get time to take Taffy's photo.

I was disheartened on other accounts today. It was those easels again. Two people had already contacted me and I'd told them I couldn't post the huge, awkward things! Well, a third person rang me to say he had won the bidding and would I send it to him. Oh, for goodness sake, what does "Buyer collect" mean?  But, he sounded like a nice man on the phone and I couldn't say no........