13 August 2014 - The Life and Times of Barbara Cursley - From Clogs to Louboutins

  Barbara started her talk by singing the opening lyrics from "I'm a lassie from Lancashire". Indeed she was born in Bolton Lancs at the nd of WW2. Her parents ran a country pub . She enjoyed a country upbringing with animals in the back gardenand attended Rivingtom Grammar School. The Headmaster, like her father was a Rotarian. The school was overlooked by Rivington Pike, the site of one of the beacons lit during the Queen's Jubilee.

Three weeks after the Munich air crash that killed Manchester Unite football players, a chartered aircraft flying from Isle of Man to Manchester crashed in thick snow on Rivington Pike killing 35 passengers and leaving only 7 survivors. Barbara's father was one of the first on the scene. To commemorate the tragedy Rotarians from the Rotary Clubs of Horwich and Douglas IOM meet at the crash site annually.

Her "Rotary Moment" arrived during July/Agust 1962 when she visited Rotarian Welsh-Lehman in Itzehoe (near Hamburg). A proposed trip to Berlin, one year after the wall was built, was more difficult than expected because her canny father had obtained a one year only passport which was not accepted at the East German border. She eventually got there by flying from Hanover, on her own ans "slightly" worried.

Barbara undertook a secretarial course at Bolton Tech and initially worked locally. She went into the hospitallity industry and worked at the Exchange Hotel, Liverpool before graduating south on a trajectory that saw her working at the Castle Hotel, Windsor at the right time to meet the new junior manager Chalmers Cursley. Asked about her feeling towards him at that time she said that she was somewhat annoyed because he, being senior, took her room.  She onviously got over this because they married in 1972.

Being in the hotel business they moved several times before ending up at Chorley Wood with their 2 children. Chalmers was the managing director of a hotel group and Barbara was teaching a City and Guilds course. After Chalmers was made redundant they bought the lease on the Crooked House restaurant in Windsor, near to the castle. This was around the time that the castle re-opened after the fire and she remembers the restaurant being packed out every day.  After this very stressful time retirement beckoned.

Barbara now enjoys golf, bridge and travelling, which is just as well as her children live in Australia, and she is enjoying her time as a Rotarian.  She showed us photos of her family, children and grandchildren and several shots of her years in Lancashire.  We all enjoyed her talk, which was followed by questions, and she received a well deserved round of applause.