Truly, November is a pretty grim month. I don’t like it. My friends don’t like it and I am told that Mr Guy Fawkes wasn’t too keen either. The leaves have fallen from the trees. The best birds have flown. The clocks have been put back which adds to the gloom and the puddles wait to soften the feet ahead of the chilblain season. Everything around us is grey.

You can’t say “stick it out, Spring is just round the corner” because it isn’t. The worst is ahead. Sleet, snow, fog, rain and floods. Christmas will provide family cheer and excess (hopefully); then New Year with hangovers and destitution through. “The seasons overspending. “Oh, woe is me” you say. “Is there hope?”

Well, amidst this terrible scene of desolation and misery there is just one institution in town which radiates warmth, cheer and friendliness. Yes, dear reader, it is the “Society of Tenby Poets and Lovers of Verse,” an institution guaranteed to despatch this winter gloom into the dustbins of contempt.

You may have heard some high blown words as you wander down Lower Frog Street of a Sunday afternoon interspersed by suppressed chuckles on muted applause. The poets have a quiet demeanour in Winter for they meet in the Old Chapel where the acoustics are brilliant, but respect is shown. At other times of the year the Chairlady Miss Draper seeks open spaces. Her devotion to the Noise Abatement Society is not absolute.

The form is that a member reads, say a classic or recites his or her own poem, which obviously is “classic bound”. Sometimes a poet reads two or sometimes a new member will get to three before the Chairlady inflicts her controlling stare.

Some of the poetry we hear just takes you away from the travails of life. Last Sunday, for instance, I lay on a deserted island enjoying the company of mermaids. I can’t tell you any more for I was stirred from my reverie by the Chairlady calling me to the podium for it was my turn. Sorry about that.

Our next meeting is scheduled for December 18 at 3pm in the Old Chapel, Lower Frog Street. Expect a bit of a Christmas flavour. No mermaids in December, please. Everybody is welcome to attend, either to participate or listen. The more the merrier, for some of our poets like to show off a little and showing off is best done to an audience.

Membership does not cost anything at all. Probably the Tenby Poets are the world’s last learned society which does not charge its members. And if you join you will soon be known as superior. Nothing is better than being an intellectual, even a philosopher. But members are discouraged from looking down (snooting) on their neighbours. All new members will be welcomed warmly. This is a very friendly and relaxed jewel in the Tenby crown. Full of laughter, mirth and scholarship. Come along.