Winter Lunch and Film

Date/Time
Date(s) - 18/01/2026
10:45 am - 4:30 pm

Location
Hoby & District Village Hall

Following the success of the Winter Lunch and Film, we have decided to repeat the format of a film and lunch, in Hoby Village Hall, catered by Mrs Bridges. Last time the film, Swede Caroline, was not a success!  This time we have gone for a much safer film, The Assam Garden, which we are sure you will enjoy.

Timetable for the day:

10.45 am  Doors open
11.15 am – 12.45pm Film
1.00 pm  Lunch (There will be no bar service, please bring your own drinks. Glasses will be provided)

If you do not wish to see the film, it would be appreciated if you did not arrive before the end of the film at 12.45 approx.

The film:

“The Assam Tea Garden” 1985 British film starring Deborah Kerr as a widow in England, who attempts to restore the exotic Indian style garden her late husband created, and forms a bond with her Indian neighbour, played by Madhur Jaffrey.

Film Synopsis:

The Assam Garden is a modest drama, which charts the friendship of a lonely and easily irritated former memsahib, Helen Graham (Deborah Kerr), and her quietly perceptive Indian neighbour, Ruxmani Lal (Madhur Jaffrey), over the course of one summer.
Instrumental to the development of their, initially difficult, relationship is the garden created by Helen’s recently deceased husband. Regardless of the very different climate of England’s South-West counties, the former colonial tea planter laid out the garden according to the designs of those found on the Indian subcontinent, replete with banana trees, rhododendrons and magnolias. Helen does not take much pleasure in the exotic flora that her late husband favoured but, on his death, feels obliged to realise his long held ambition to have the garden featured in Great British Gardens magazine.
It is during one afternoon of watering and weeding that she meets Ruxmani, an immigrant who lives in a nearby development. During their brief exchange, it transpires that Ruxmani entered the garden as it provides a shortcut to the village where she is seeking medical help for her ill husband. While Helen is displeased with Ruxmani’s presumptions that the garden doubles as a public footpath, she agrees to phone a doctor on her behalf. On leaving, Ruxmani comments on the garden’s Indian style and wistfully refers to her birth country’s beauty.
Thus, it comes as little surprise that when she returns a few days later to thank Helen, she offers to help cultivate this outdoor space. With both women now engrossed in gardening chores, the similarities between the former coloniser and colonised begin to emerge. This includes their respective uneasy adjustment to Britain in the 1980s and, concordantly, a shared nostalgia for India of the 1940s. For Helen and Ruxmani, traversing the space of the Assam garden becomes a navigation and negotiation of past and present; of a colonial and postcolonial world.

click here for the film location report

The food:

Catering by Mrs Bridges of Leicester

Menu
* Fresh Sourdough and Butter.

To Start

• Cauliflower and brie soup
• Duck rillette, pickled mushrooms, sourdough.
• Gnocchi with smoked salmon and caviar cream
• Smoked goats cheese and roasted beetroot salad

For main

• Slow cooked beef cheek in port, mashed potato, spinach and roasted onion.
• Crisp belly pork, miso pak choi, butterbean and smoked sausage broth.
• Monkfish and pea paella, Chive oil.
• Sweet onion and goats cheese Gallette, dressed watercress, soft goats cheese.

To finish

• Basque baked cheesecake with tea soaked raisins.
• 70% chocolate mousse, honeycomb, passionfruit gel,milk ice cream.
• Lemon meringue tart.
• Pear and almond tart, clotted cream

* Coffee or Tea.

Cost: 

Friends £36.00      Guests £38.00 
(Includes the film, lunch and coffee/tea; and is actually the same price as last year!

1. download and print a menu choice form
2. complete and post to the address shown on the form
3. enclose a cheque for the full amount made payable to Leicestershire and Rutland Gardens Trust

If you have any questions on this process phone Steve on 07579211629