The following story is true, though I concede it may beggar belief. Some names have been omitted to protect the innocent, if indeed there were any.
Circa 1960; I am of course single and at a party at a house in Masterton in which four young women “flat”. Back then we called them girls and these particular females were mostly school teachers. The house was brim full of revelers of both genders and I decided to tell a joke. It wasn’t new then and it certainly isn’t now. I said that there had been a meeting of all the virgins in Masterton on the previous night. Right on cue somebody asked: “Where was it held?” and with impeccable timing I said: “In the telephone box in Roberts Road.”
Trust me, back then there was a telephone box in Roberts Road.
The young ladies present all expressed disappointment that they hadn’t been told it was on. They assured me that had they known about it, they would have all been there.
I agreed to inform them when the next meeting was going to be held. A week or so later I put an advertisement in the personal column of the daily paper which read: The annual general meeting of the “V” Club - you would never use the word “virgin” publicly back then - will be held next Thursday night in the telephone box in Roberts Road at 7.30 p.m. For those requiring transport a motor scooter will leave - and here I gave the address of the house where the party had been held - at 7.15.
To some extent I had called the bluff of the female party goers, but they responded well and confirmed that they would all legitimately attend the meeting and that I was going to have to organise bigger premises.
One young lady in the group lived with her mum in Renall Street and she offered a quite large summer house that sat in their tree clad grounds as a potential venue. I accepted the offer and enlisted the services of a good friend, chemist Wayne Snowsill, to assist me in conducting the meeting. Wayne and I both played in a rock band and although the phrase “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll” had yet to be coined we certainly had the expression in mind well before the flower power people were to later claim authorship. Wayne dispensed drugs and we played rock’n’roll and so we were two thirds of the way towards our goal, which was infrequently reached.
About twenty women, all in their early twenties, turned up to our inaugural meeting. First-off we needed office holders and I was elected patron and Wayne secretary/treasurer. Not that there was anything to treasure; it was decided quite early on in the evening that no subscription would be payable.
The sexual revolution was not even in its infancy and so the validity of the lady membership was justifiably taken for granted. It was unanimously agreed that eligibility to belong was on a neither confirm nor deny basis. Once again we were light years ahead of our time with the clichés. It would be some twenty years later that the Americans would lay claim to this one when they were requesting access for their nuclear armed ships to our ports.
The format for the next meeting was discussed and our members requested a guest speaker. Wayne and I had a friend who was a little older than us and his success with the fairer sex was legendary. For the want of a better name we shall him “John.” We decided to engage him for the next time. We knew it was entirely possible that he may be intimately aware that one or two of our members were attending under false pretenses, but if that were so, he never let on. The age of chivalry had not yet passed.
Our second meeting was held at my parent’s home. They were away on holiday. I opened up the doors between the dining room and the lounge, had chairs arranged in rows for our members with a top table for the patron and the secretary/treasurer and a lectern for the guest speaker who was hidden in one of the back bedrooms while we read the minutes of the previous meeting and went through the other necessary formalities. As I went to retrieve John from his exile in the sun-porch I heard the ladies speculate as to who the mystery speaker might be. The top contender for some unknown reason was Dr. Wyvern Cook, a local GP with a wry sense of humour, and I made a mental note to invite him next time.
John, who was widely travelled and well read, gave a wonderful dissertation on the virtues of chastity. Whatever other attributes he had, you could now add “skilled orator” and the audience hung on his every word. I wish I had recorded it for posterity; it could well have been a classic for its time. Unfortunately the speech was so all-encompassing that further meetings seemed superfluous.
So sadly the club died as quickly as it had been conceived. Our record book contained only two sets of minutes, meticulously written up by our secretary/treasurer, and I have patroned no other organisation since.
In the intervening period, Telecom has dismantled most of the town’s telephone boxes.
There was now little demand for them, they said, even as meeting venues.
