Christmas Reunion

17th December 2013

By Jack Welch, Volunteer Press Officer

It's getting festive down at WITS central today, as we celebrated our countdown to Christmas and the fantastic achievements of our project so far while our volunteers feasted on an assortment of delicious treats, including chocolate cake, mince pies and the odd savoury snack once in a while! Today was perhaps all the more special though, for we saw the return of our hard-working student volunteers, as they make a brief return to Dorset to have a rest from their busy studies at their respective universities. We welcomed back Jenny, Jack and Issy to join in all the numerous activities we had in store for them and a special viewing of the sitcom, Blackadder Goes Forth.

Rosie and Liz read up on some of Hardy's melancholy work. 

First though, we had a bit of work to crack on with, when we had our resident Thomas Hardy poetry expert, Jasmine, a volunteer at the The Keep Museum, to investigate the context on some of Hardy's war poetry during the course WWI. Although the subject, and the poetry content itself, was less than festive in its spirit, the group were very intrigued to learn about how Hardy harboured a personal guilt about how he could only convey his frustration about the events through his writing. We are looking forward to investigating further the poetry written by Hardy and his contemporaries, as well as producing our own!

Thanks to our expert and volunteers who took part
in the activity. 

Once that task was completed, it was over to the back room as we enjoyed the remainder of our time watching Blackadder and his trials in the trenches. The snacks, unsurprisingly, went down a treat with the group and marking 2013 for WITS as a big success for everyone!