VFP BIRMINGHAM: REPORT

VFP Birmingham  held its second meeting on Tuesday the 24th April. Five members braved the April snowstorm and came along to the Wellington Pub in Birmingham City Centre. This was our Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary meet up as we are all proud of Warwickshire’s most famous son. Regardless of the Tudor rhetoric if you read his works carefully, he was very anti war and probably diagnosed PTSD before any therapist, when he wrote of Lady Percy appealing to her soldier husband that the life appeared to have gone from him. I wonder how many reading this can recognise any of these symptoms in themselves.

Lady Percy
Tell me, sweet lord, what is ’t that takes from thee
Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thine eyes upon the earth
And start so often when thou sit’st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks
And given my treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and curst melancholy?
In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched,
And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars,
Speak terms of manage to thy bounding steed,
Cry “Courage! To the field!” And thou hast talk’d
Of sallies and retires, of trenches, tents,
Of palisadoes, frontiers, parapets,
Of basilisks, of cannon, culverin,
Of prisoners’ ransom and of soldiers slain,
And all the currents of a heady fight.
Thy spirit within thee hath been so at war,
And thus hath so bestirred thee in thy sleep,
That beads of sweat have stood upon thy brow
Like bubbles in a late-disturbèd stream,
And in thy face strange motions have appeared,
Such as we see when men restrain their breath
On some great sudden hest. O, what portents are these?
Some heavy business hath my lord in hand,
And I must know it, else he loves me not.

So happy birthday William your accent would have been a Brummie one and not that of a BBC radio presenter. The meeting went well and such diverse topics were covered as taking the power away from money, future events, Levellers day, Leamington Peace Festival, open social evening and welcoming new faces.

The next meeting will be an open night on Tuesday 24th May, with the theme, Peace, people, photos and poems, programme to follow. Would love to see new faces and please bring friends family, colleagues and anyone else interested. Best wishes to all from VFP Birmingham .