It’s great to see so many members of the Twinning Association here tonight. Since the twinning link between our two towns, Stanthorpe here in England and Malatte in France, was established, the relationship between the towns has gone from strength to strength.

Last month, 25 members of the association from Stanthorpe spent a weekend in Malatte. Our hosts had arranged a great programme. We learned how cheese is produced in the region and had the chance to taste the products. The theme park trip had to be cancelled, but we all had a great time on the final boat trip down the river-that was the real highlight.

This is a special year for the Association because it’s 25 years since we were founded. In Malatte, they’re planning to mark this by building a footbridge in the municipal park. We’ve been discussing what to do here and we’ve decided to plant a poplar tree in the museum gardens. We considered buying a garden seat to put there, but the authorities weren’t happy with that idea.

In terms of fundraising to support our activities, we’ve done very well. Our pancake evening was well attended and made record profits. And everyone enjoyed the demonstration of French cookery, which was nearly as successful. Numbers for our film show were limited because of the venue so we’re looking for somewhere bigger next year.

We’re looking forward to welcoming our French visitors here next week, and I know that many of you here will be hosting individuals or families. The coach from France will arrive at 5 pm on Friday. Don’t try to do too much that first evening as they’ll be tired, so have dinner in the house or garden rather than eating out. The weather looks as if it’ll be OK so you might like to plan a barbecue. Then the next morning’s market day in town, and that’s always a good place to stroll round.

On Saturday evening, we’ll all meet up at the football club, where once again we’ll have Toby Sharp and his band performing English and Scottish country songs. Toby will already be well known to many of you as last year he organized our special quiz night and presented the prizes.

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Now on Sunday, we’ll be taking our visitors to Farley House. You may not all be familiar with it, so here’s a map to help you. You can see the car park at the bottom of the map. There’s an excellent farm shop in the grounds where our visitors can buy local produce – it’s in the old stables, which is the first building you come to. They’re built round a courtyard, and the shop’s in the far corner on the left. There’s also a small café on the right as you go in.

I know that one or two of our visitors may not be all that mobile. The main entrance to the house has a lot of steps so you might want to use the disabled entry. This is on the far side of the house from the car park.

Children will probably be most interested in the adventure playground. That’s at the northern end of the larger lake, in a bend on the path that leads to the lake. There’s lots for children to do there.

There are a number of lovely gardens near the house. The kitchen gardens are rectangular and surrounded by a wall. They’re to the north-east of the house, quite near the smaller lake. They’re still in use and have a great collection of fruit and vegetables.

The Temple of the Four Winds is a bit more of a walk – but it’s worth it. Take the path from the car park and go past the western sides of the stables and the house. Then when the path forks, take the right-hand path. Go up there with the woods on your left and the temple is right at the end. There are great views over the whole area.

OK, so that’s . . .

COLIN: I haven’t seen you for a bit, Marie.
MARIE: No. I’ve been busy with my project.
COLIN: You’re making a vegan alternative to eggs, aren’t you? Something that doesn’t use animal products?
MARIE: Yes. I’m using chickpeas. I had two main aims when I first started looking for an alternative to eggs, but actually I’ve found chickpeas have got more advantages.
COLIN: Right.
MARIE: But how about your project on reusing waste food – you were looking at bread, weren’t you?
COLIN: Yes. It’s been hard work, but I’ve enjoyed it. The basic process was quite straightforward -breaking the stale bread down to a paste then reforming it.
MARIE: But you were using 3-D printing, weren’t you, to make the paste into biscuits?
COLIN: Yeah, I’d used that before, but in this project, I had time to play around with different patterns for the biscuits and finding how I could add fruit and vegetables to make them a more appetising colour, and I was really pleased with what I managed to produce.
MARIE: It must’ve been a great feeling to make something appetising out of bits of old bread that would’ve been thrown away otherwise.
COLIN: It was. And I’m hoping that some of the restaurants in town will be interested in the biscuits. I’m going to send them some samples.
MARIE: I came across something on the internet yesterday that might interest you. It was a company that’s developed touch-sensitive sensors for food labels.
COLIN: Mmm?
MARIE: It’s a special sort of label on the food package. When the label’s smooth, the food is fresh and then when you can feel bumps on the label, that means the food’s gone bad. It started off as a project to help visually impaired people know whether food was fit to eat or not.
COLIN: Interesting. So just solid food?
MARIE: No, things like milk and juice as well. But actually, I thought it might be really good for drug storage in hospitals and pharmacies.
COLIN: Right. And coming back to food, maybe it’d be possible to use it for other things besides freshness. Like how many kilograms a joint of meat is, for example.

MARIE: Yes, there’s all sorts of possibilities.

COLIN: I was reading an article about food trends predicting how eating habits might change in the next few years.
MARIE: Oh things like more focus on local products? That seems so obvious, but the shops are still full of imported foods.
COLIN: Yes, they need to be more proactive to address that.
MARIE: And somehow motivate consumers to change, yes.
COLIN: One thing everyone’s aware of is the need for a reduction in unnecessary packaging-but just about everything you buy in supermarkets is still covered in plastic. The government needs to do something about it.
MARIE: Absolutely. It’s got to change.
COLIN: Do you think there’ll be more interest in gluten and lactose-free food?
MARIE: For people with allergies or food intolerances? I don’t know. Lots of people I know have been buying that type of food for years now.
COLIN: Yes, even if they haven’t been diagnosed with an allergy.
MARIE: That’s right. One thing I ’ve noticed is the number of branded products related to celebrity chefs – people watch them cooking on TV and then buy things like spice mixes or frozen foods with the chef’s name on. I bought something like that once, but I won’t again.
COLIN: Yeah – I bought a ready-made spice mix for chicken which was supposed to be used by a chef I’d seen on television, and it didn’t actually taste of anything.
MARIE: Mm. Did the article mention ‘ghost kitchens’ used to produce takeaway food?
COLIN: No. What are they?
MARIE: Well, they might have the name of a restaurant, but actually they’re a cooking facility just for delivery meals – the public don’t ever go there. But people aren’t aware of that – it’s all kept very quiet.
COLIN: So people don’t realise the food’s not actually from the restaurant?
MARIE: Right.
COLIN: Did you know more and more people are using all sorts of different mushrooms now, to treat different health concerns? Things like heart problems?
MARIE: Hmm. They might be taking a big risk there.
COLIN: Yes, it’s hard to know which varieties are safe to eat. Anyway maybe now…

For my presentation today, I’m going to talk about the Céide Fields in the northwest of Ireland, one of the largest Neolithic sites in the world. I recently visited this site and observed the work that is currently being done by a team of archaeologists there.

The site was first discovered in the 1930s by a local teacher, Patrick Caulfield. He noticed that when local people were digging in the bog, they were constantly hitting against what seemed to be rows of stones. He realised that these must be walls and that they must be thousands of years old for them to predate the bog which subsequently grew over them.

He wrote to the National Museum in Dublin to ask them to investigate, but no one took him seriously. It wasn’t until 40 years later, when Patrick Caulfield’s son Seamus, who had become an archaeologist by then, began to explore further. He inserted iron probes into the bog to map the formation of the stones, a traditional method which local people had always used for finding fuel buried in the bog for thousands of years. Carbon dating later proved that the site was over 5,000 years old and was the largest Neolithic site in Ireland.

Thanks to the bog which covers the area, the remains of the settlement at Céide Fields, which is over 5,000 years old, are extremely well-preserved. A bog is 90 percent water; its soil is so saturated that when the grasses and heathers that grow on its surface die, they don’t fully decay but accumulate in layers. Objects remain so well preserved in these conditions because of the acidity of the peat and the deficiency of oxygen. At least 175 days of rain a year are required for this to happen; this part of Ireland gets an average of 225 days.

The Neolithic farmers at Céide would have enjoyed several centuries of relative peace and stability. Neolithic farmers generally lived in larger communities than their predecessors, with a number of houses built around a community building. As they lived in permanent settlements, Neolithic farmers were able to build bigger houses. These weren’t round as people often assume, but rectangular with a small hole in the roof that allowed smoke to escape. This is one of many innovations and indicates that the Neolithic farmers were the first people to cook indoors. Another new technology that Neolithic settlers brought to Ireland was pottery. Fragments of Neolithic pots have been found in Céide and elsewhere in Ireland. The pots were used for many things; as well as for storing food, pots were filled with a small amount of fat and when this was set alight, they served as lamps.

It’s thought that the Céide Fields were mainly used as paddocks for animals to graze in. Evidence from the Céide Fields suggests that each plot of land was of a suitable size to sustain an extended family. They may have used a system of rotational grazing in order to prevent over-grazing and to allow for plant recovery and regrowth. This must have been a year-round activity as no structures have been found which would have been used to shelter animals in the winter.

However, archaeologists believe that this way of life at Céide ceased abruptly. Why was this? Well, several factors may have contributed to the changing circumstances. The soil would have become less productive and led to the abandonment of farming. The crop rotation system was partly responsible for this as it would have been very intensive and was not sustainable. But there were also climatic pressures too. The farmers at Céide would have enjoyed a relatively dry period, but this began to change and the conditions became wetter as there was a lot more rain. It was these conditions that encouraged the bog to form over the area which survives today.

So now I’d like to show you some …