Suitably attired yesterday, 18 took part in an early tenth birthday afternoon tea for the worldwide red hat movement launched by Sue Ellen Cooper in the United States when she and some friends decided to ‘‘greet middle age with verve, humour and elan''.
The 1961 Jenny Joseph poem Warning serves as a mantra to the red-hatters.
It begins: ‘‘When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me . . .''
None of the red revellers was confessing to which of the other suggestions in the poem they had followed - among them spending the pension on brandy, pressing alarm bells, picking flowers in other people's gardens, wearing terrible shirts, learning to spit and eating 3lbs (1.5kg) of sausages in one go.
The Dunedin group was instigated about two and a-half years ago by Florence Wilson and Betty Triggs. The group has swelled to 44 members.
Queen at yesterday's ceremony, Karen Lester, said the group was a chance for women to get together and have fun and do a few things their families might frown on.
The women are a little cagey about their ages, only revealing that the over-50s wear red hats and purple clothing and the under-50s wear lavender with pink hats.
Their most adventurous outing to date has been go-karting. You could say it was a learning experience.
Mrs Lester said they discovered the importance of the size of seats and the role of gravity, which resulted in one ‘‘of our ladies'' having to be extracted.
