Highlights this month -
- Mary Clabaut - member of the month - A wonderful story of career, travels and family life in amazing location.
- Book Club - Mr Wilder and Me - Sue Morrison has given us an interesting exert from the book that will make you want more.
- Gardening - Spring into Action - Our local inspiring guide to all things in the garden
Message from our President
Bienvenue!
Welcome to the website of the Dordogne Ladies Club International. We are a vibrant and enthusiastic community of women of all ages and nationalities (with English as the lingua franca) who have settled across a wide area of the Dordogne. The DLCI was formed almost 35 years ago with the original aim of cultural exchange and providing mutual support for new lives in another country and we remain true to that today. There are many opportunities to meet regularly, both informally and through more structured events, which are designed both to entertain and inform. We enjoy exploring the beautiful countryside through our guided walks. We are also very proud to acknowledge that we raise significant funds for local charities. Some of our members work and many, though retired, are active on a voluntary basis in our local communes. Some of us have been in France for many years and others have only just arrived. Whatever your situation, you will find a warm welcome from the DLCI. I hope I have whetted your appetite and that after you have browsed our website, you will get in touch! I feel very privileged to belong to such an active and friendly association and I look forward to meeting you in the near future. Cordialement Kathy John |
Book Club Passage
The Dordogne Ladies Book Club Whilst we ladies in the book club have not been able to meet this year in our groups Sue Morrison has kindly given us our book club quotation for this month. I think we are all looking forward at the moment in future when we can get back to normal. Dare I say it and meet up again - lets hope that is not too far ahead of us now. Happy reading.. Book Quote for the month.. Dialogue between a young Greek translator and Mr. Diamond, script-writing partner of Billy Wilder about Wilder 'coming to life in Europe' and then going to England to make the Sherlock Holmes film:- 'That wasn't quite the same' , said Mr. Diamond, 'I mean we enjoyed ourselves there, but England is not Europe. I know that technically England is part of Europe, but ... England is its own thing, you know?' 'Yes, I understand', I said. And it was true: whenever I went to London with my (English) mother, I always had the sense of visiting not just a different country but a different continent. One which fascinated me, as it did most of my compatriots, but where we found many of the customs and mores to be occult, eccentric and indeed incomprehensible. From Mr Wilder and me - Viking Books published in 2020 With almost a quarter of the DLCI membership now taking part. Some members are active online and others who enjoy coming to the meetings we have held. Thinking about our aim and the benefits of joining the club I'm so pleased we've retained our original objective to make sure the book club is accessible to all DLCI members. This year that has been incredibly important and as Winter approaches and government restrictions tighten the flexibility of our club being online or face to face comes into its own. A good book has never been more important and friends to share it with. We have been able to hold meetings monthly in 3 locations - Bergerac, Monpazier & St Foy. These have been suspended from December 2020 due to the Government restrictions. A summary list of books which members have enjoyed enough to recommend to the club, are sent out by email each month to book club members as a reading list. The book club page on Facebook has the reviews of the books the group has read and we encourage all members to share their reading experiences with us. To join the Book Club or for more information please email: Patricia.a.fielding@gmail.com Once you join you will receive a copy of our book list and have access to our Facebook page. |
Gardening Column
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Mary Clabaut
In 1966 after quite considerable research and lengthy discussions with my parents, I decided to emigrate to Australia. I was 21, loved my job and had a wide circle of friends but felt the need to ‘widen my horizons’. I hadn’t come to the decision lightly and had acquired a great deal of information from the Australian Information Office which was a ten minute walk from where I worked. I set sail for Australia in October 1966 and on board, met three other young women who were joining their fiances, others, couples and families who were going back to Australia after holidaying with their families in Britain. We formed a friendly group and some of us remained in touch after arrival in Australia. I disembarked in Perth. I had chosen to do so because it was the smallest of the state capitals and I felt I would find my feet more quickly than in the other bigger cities. I stayed at first at the YWCA, quite strict but I didn’t mind. In less than three weeks, I found employment in the accounts department of a major wool exporter and was house sharing with two young Australian women in a very pleasant suburb with easy access to the city centre. I felt very fortunate I could reassure my parents back in the UK that all was well and that they could stop worrying about me. Some months later I applied to become an Air Hostess with an airline company known as MMA ( McRobertson Miller AirLines ) operating from Perth to the whole of Western Australia and the Northern Territories. I could write reams about this experience because it really was an adventure for me having known only city life until then. I discovered the Outback as the Australians call it, with its sparsely populated small towns with often, only a basic general store. I was reminded at times of Western films I had seen in my childhood. It was during my time with MMA that I met Rosemary Copley ( then O’Halloran ) who was a fellow hostess and is, I’m sure, well known by all as she is Membership Secretary for DLCI. Nearly two years later, I left Perth for Sydney to join Trans Australia Airlines, again as a hostess. There I met up with Rosemary again. She was sharing a flat with another ex MMA hostess and I was sharing with a girl from Perth who had been at school with Rosemary and between us, we have never lost touch over the years. In Sydney, I also met my future husband, Jacques, who was Station Manager for UTA French Airlines. Jacques and I were married in the UK in August 1970 and two months later, left for Ceylon, a beautiful island situated only 19 km from mainland India. Which had been colonised by the Portuguese in 1505. They were supplanted by the Dutch in 1658 and from 1796 onward, Britain began to take over. By 1833, the whole island was under British rule. Tea, coffee and coconut plantations were developed with the main workforce being Tamils from southern India. Ceylon gained full independence in 1948. We adapted quickly to life in Colombo, the capital city. We lived in a spacious house and had a staff of two, a cook and his assistant. This was considered as basic living conditions by old hand expatriates who had known Ceylon before it became a Democratic Socialist Republic. In 1971, there was an insurrection against the Government of Mrs Bandararanaike who had assumed power in 1959 after the assassination of her husband, the then elected Prime Minister. A strict curfew was immediately imposed. The British Embassy phoned to inform me that a Navy vessel was on standby to evacuate British nationals – if necessary. The insurrection was crushed within a year and life returned (almost) to normal. We were not permitted to travel outside Colombo until the army had finished what they termed as mopping up operations. After calm had been restored, we were able to get about again. A must was a trip to go and see elephants taking a bath after a hard day lifting felled tree trunks and other heavy work, now done by machines. What a sight it was to see these huge animals lying supine in the waters of a lake while their keepers ‘massaged’ them with coconut husks. Unfortunately, this has become a huge draw for tourists and elephants are captured now, mainly for this use. It is most unlikely now that while driving, you might see an elephant crossing the road as we did, just after our arrival in Ceylon. Sadly, I recently read that Sri Lanka recorded the highest number of elephant deaths in the world. Our son was born in 1972 and in that year. Ceylon became a republic changing its name to Sri Lanka. Buddhism is given primary place as the country’s religion although it is often described more as a way of life than a religion. There are many huge statues of Buddha all over the island, some of which were erected in very early times and attest to the profound veneration his followers bestow on him. We departed Colombo in 1974 for New Caledonia, a French Overseas Territory. Jacques was now Regional Manager for operations covering a vast area that included Sydney, Auckland, Pago-Pago Port-Villa and other islands in the Pacific. Life was very pleasant in Noumea. Its town centre is quite small but adequate and a beach is never very far away. I joined a group of English speaking young mothers with children in the same age group as my son. Some of us are still in touch today as are some of the children. In 1976, we moved to Port Vila, the capital of the New Hebrides, now known as Vanuatu. Jacques had been appointed General Manager of the inter island airline company Air Melanesia. Our second son was born in Port Vila in 1978. These islands, in the South Pacific, were governed by Britain and France, but as each country had its own administration, this resulted in two very different systems of governance with very little co-operation between the two, often competing to gain influence and always ready to criticise the other. This mutual distrust, unfortunately and sometimes negatively influenced the island population. The New Hebrides gained independence and a new name, Vanuatu, in 1980. The main source of income today is the sale of passports which are easily obtained if one can afford it. They cost thousands of dollars ! In 1981 / 82, Jacques was given the task of reorganising operations at the main airport in Tahiti for both UTA and Air Polynesia. It was our shortest stay anywhere and for Jacques, one of the most demanding as he also covered Los Angeles and Honolulu and hardly had time to admire the lovely view of the sea with Marlon Brando’s own island, a short boat trip away. The Tahitians are very friendly and often invite us to their homes, be it for lunch or dinner. The occasion nearly always ended with them putting on a little show of music and dancing which was always a pleasure to watch. In 1982 / 84. It was back to New Caledonia followed by a return to France. With both children in school, I decided to look for a job and found myself working for Air Canada at Charles De Gaulle airport. I was back in the hustle and bustle of a big air terminal and loving it! We felt sure that our stay in France was going to be long term. We had bought a house and felt settled, but three years later, we were packing again to go to the Middle East in time for the new school year. In September 1987, we arrived in Muscat, the capital of the Sultanate of Oman which is on the north-east coast of Arabia. The interior of Oman is mostly desert with low hills but its coast is flat and wide with beautiful, deserted beaches. A jeep is a must for exploring as there are few sealed roads outside Muscat. At weekends, we often set out on wadi ( oasis ) trips, always in small groups for safety as it’s so easy to get lost in the desert. We said goodbye to Oman in 1991. From 1991 / 96. We lived in Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, an immense archipelago. I will describe this experience another time. Indonesia is so vast and its people and terrain so varied that it’s impossible to describe in just a few pages. 1996 / 99, it was back to Nouvelle-Caledonie as Regional Manager for the South Pacific which meant a lot of travelling between Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Fiji etc. I often accompanied Jacques on these trips and while he was busy in meetings, I was rediscovering some of my favourite places. 1999 / 03 our last expat posting was Singapore, a city I first visited in 1970 which had greatly developed since then. Orchard Road was the place to go shopping in 1970 and still is today, but instead of the individual shops of the seventies, it Is lined with air conditioned shopping centres which, I must admit provide a pleasant escape from the heat and humidity. The history of modern Singapore began in 1819 with the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles and the ships of the East India Company. A village was already established on the island and it was the chieftain of the community who gave permission for a trading factory to be set up by the company. By 1824, there were more than 10,000 inhabitants. And six years later, this had increased to 17,000 with the Chinese constituting to 40% of the population. Two years before Raffles’ death in 1826, the last in a series of treaties was signed. These treaties ceded the island to the British. The Crown colony was dissolved on 16 September 1963 when Singapore became a state of Malaysia ending 144 years of British rule on the island. On 9 August 1965, Singapore officially left Malaysia to become the independent Republic of Singapore. We returned to France in 2003 and came to live down here in the south west of France in 2015. |
Members on the MapYou are never far away from another member; we are in total - 99 members across the region. Everyone who comes along to a lunch will be given a badge. Each badge includes a small dot in different colours. This indicates members who live in similar areas so if you spot someone with the same colour take the opportunity to say hello. Pink dots - Bergerac and surrounding area Green dots - South East Blue dots - South West Yellow dots - North East Red dots - North West Events are held in different parts of the region so you will have the opportunity to join activities close by. Our previous Members of the Month - Click on the members name to read the members stories
December 2020 - Philippa Tillyer November 2020 - Evelyn Bernardi October 2020 - Florence Asterie September 2020 - Sandy Scovell August 2020 - Alix Sundquist July 2020 - Liz Berks |
Charities
The Dordogne Ladies Club International was founded to provide friendship and support as well as to raise money for local charities. We aim to do this in a way that is sustainable and maintains the beautiful environment in which we live. We look after our planet the way she looks after us.
We are proud that in the last five years we have given in excess of 20,000 euros in donations to local charities chosen by our members. Each year the members will nominate and choose new charities to receive the donations.
We are proud that in the last five years we have given in excess of 20,000 euros in donations to local charities chosen by our members. Each year the members will nominate and choose new charities to receive the donations.
