Hosting of the Area Meeting moves around its constituent Local Meetings for its business meetings. The March meeting was originally planned to take place at the Pales Meeting House, however, there was a prior booking of that space and, as it happened, the heavy snows of early March made it too difficult to hold it there, so it was moved to the smaller Llandrindod Meeting House.
There probably isn't much difference between the Pales and Llandrindod Meeting Houses in size, but the Pales has the advantage of having the Meeting Room and the School Room adjacent, with an openable screen separating the two.
Over the past few years, it can be expected that Area Meeting will attract around forty Friends, so the first challenge to Llandrindod Friends was to check that we had forty chairs, forty mugs, etc. The fact that AM was coming to Llandrindod was the catalyst to encourage us to make some changes to the Meeting Room to make its arrangement more minimalist - a plan that we had hatched some weeks before, in the hope that it would be more attractive. A great amount of paper needed to be rehoused, but forty plus seats were arranged in reasonable spaciousness.
The hosting team were in place for about 9:30, and the AM Clerks and other early arrivers followed by ten. At eleven o'clock thirty Friends were comfortably seated ready for the worship that begins our business, having enjoyed mugs of coffee and biscuits. We had asked Friends to bring food for a shared lunch which worked extremely well, but their generosity and ours meant that we had an embarrassment of cake for the tea that followed Meeting!
It is a cliche to say that we enjoyed hosting - but it is a fact. It really was a pleasurable experience to have so many Friends visit us and enjoy the experience.
