Name: PALS MEETING AUGUST 2025
Start: 2025-08-29T09:30:00+01:00
End: 2025-08-29T14:30:00+01:00
Location: Chester le Street Masonic Centre

We'd love to invite you to the PALS August Meeting at The Masonic Centre in Chester le Street. Its open to everyone in the local area, all we ask is that you let us know so we can make sure we have enough food available
We kick off with coffee, biscuits and a chat, we have some high stakes bingo going on around 11 am, 2 course lunch at noon followed by a great matinee movie
All free of charge
The Movie this month is: Heavens Above!
A 1963 British satirical comedy film directed and produced by John and Roy Boulting, and starring Peter Sellers who many say gave the best performance of his career in this movie
A naive but caring prison chaplain, John Smallwood, is accidentally assigned as vicar to the small and prosperous English country town of Orbiston Parva, instead of a cleric with the same name who is favoured by the Bishop who wants to maintain the support for the church of the Despard family, who practically run the town and operate a large factory there.
Smallwood's belief in the practical application of charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the locals, whose assertions that they are good, Christian people are belied in Smallwood's eyes by their behaviour and ideas. He creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman as his churchwarden, taking in a family being evicted from their illegal encampment, and persuading local landowner Lady Despard to provide food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town.
His scheme spirals out of control and very soon the local traders are up in arms as they have lost all their customers. He tries to explain this to the residents but is besieged in the church hall and only just rescued by the police.
As a face-saving act, the Bishop appoints the "correct" Smallwood to the parish and assigns the "troublemaker" to the Scottish island of "Ultima Thule" and makes him "Bishop of Outer Space" to the British space operations based there. But when the intended pilot of the first rocket gets cold feet, Smallwood takes his place. He is last heard broadcasting hymns over the space capsule's radio.