WI News March 2014

BOSBURY

At the February Open Meeting President, Rosemary Bayles, welcomed members and visitors.  Rosemary reported that the Burns Night Supper had been a great success and thanked the committee and their helpers for all their hard work.

Nigel Jeffries, our speaker for the evening, then told us all about the building of the Hereford and Gloucester Canal which he illustrated with slides.  After two Acts of Parliament building work finally started in 1793, and by 1795 they had reached Newent, but the work was fraught with difficulties.  There were 3 tunnels and twenty-three locks. They managed to reach Ledbury in 1798 when that stretch opened.  Unfortunately they had underestimated the cost and ran out of money.  Stephen Ballard, a local man, was appointed "Clerk to the Canal" in 1827 and there was a 3rd Act of Parliament in 1838 to raise more money, Work continued on the section from Ledbury to Hereford reaching Withington in 1843 and the 34 miles were  finally completed in 1845.

LEOMINSTER

We had a good start to our 60 year anniversary of our institute. Our guest speaker, Dennis Downey, gave us a talk called 'Irresistible Offa' in January. People come from all over Europe to walk it, he conducts many groups there and he also conducts a walk round Leominster starting from the information bureau weekly. February brought Gill Hollingsworth with a wonderful demonstration of patchwork and some very beautiful quilts were displayed.

BROMYARD

Members met on February 11th in the Conquest Theatre. We could see when we arrived that we were in for a culinary treat. After the singing of Jerusalem and some matters of business Shirley Cook our president told us the brief history of pancakes. The name comes originally from the Greek name for the pan in which they were cooked. Shirley then invited members to cook their own pancakes and toss them. Shirley had prepared pancakes for members to sample. The savoury pancakes were served hot and filled with a lasagne sauce. The sweet pancakes were filled with crème patisserie and sprinkled with amaretti crumbs and liqueur. Delicious.  Thank you Shirley. Our next meeting will be on Tuesday March 11th at 7.30pm in the Conquest Theatre. Mrs Molly Pepper will give a sewing machine demonstration. Any queries please call Shirley on 01885 489029.

 WYE WOMEN held their first Birthday Celebrations at the Shire Hall, Hereford with the Hereford Police Choir on Tuesday, 11th March, 2014. What a wonderful sound the choir made, they definitely sang for their supper and we were nicely surprised that they sang Jerusalem for us at the end of the performance.

Thanks to Katherine Bandfield who supported us on this lovely evening and to all members and the Committee, who baked lovely cakes and made the tea and generally helped to make the event a success.

HOLMER spent a wonderful evening in March listening to the beautiful  Welsh tenor voice of Gwyn James. He took us back to children's TV in the 50's when he performed in "Music and Macaroni" as a young boy, and also at the Albert Hall, chosen as the young soloist. You can see he so loves to sing, performing these days to raise money for the Charles Renton Unit in Hereford.

PEMBRIDGE

Pembridge WI celebrated the 95th birthday of Margaret White, their oldest member, with an afternoon tea and birthday cake baked and decorated by two of their members. Margaret first became involved with the WI in 1965 when she joined the Parbold Institute in her native Lancashire and since moving to Herefordshire in 1977 she has held dual membership with Pembridge and Eardisland.

KINGSWOOD'S speaker this month was Irene Whittall delivering a talk on 'Her Life as a Midwife'.  Irene introduced her talk by saying how much she enjoyed her career and how very privileged she felt to have been a nurse and midwife.  We learnt that midwifery was the second oldest profession! From a young age Irene wanted to be a nurse and in 1967 started her career as a nursing assistant which gave her a good grounding for the midwifery career she entered in 1969.  During her twenty three year career Irene worked in various Herefordshire Hospitals as a midwife and also as a District Nurse in the local area.  Irene informed and entertained us by sharing her experiences including some very amusing events.  We learnt how the NHS has improved, the importance of antenatal care and the ongoing training of nurses and midwives.  Towards the end of her career she was delivering the babies of parents whom she had also delivered.  She finished by sharing how privileged she felt to be present and part of such a special occasion as the birth of a baby.

PETERSTOW'S guest speaker at our February meeting was Rita Kearsey from Smiths of Newent auctioneers. On a previous occasion Rita had brought several items for our members to show their knowledge of antiques and give their own valuation. This visit, members were invited to proffer their own pieces. Rita assessed each item with deflation for some members and elation for others.

SALTMARSHE

January is our group's rest month, so that we can supposedly avoid the "bad weather ". When we get together in February it's always good to catch up with one another and what's going on here and there. Two years ago our February meeting had to be cancelled due to snow; unabashed we decided that this year we'd meet in the afternoon for this month,so that we had less chance of having to call the meeting off. Well, we were unlucky again. There had been downpours of rain by lunch time, coupled with ever increasing wind speeds so that our "powers that be" chose to  yield once again on safety grounds, as some of our group travel quite a distance. There followed thunder and lightning, hail stones and howling gale force winds.

So, we've been denied the pleasure of socialising together whilst learning how to work with sheet pewter: but hopefully this can be re - arranged for another occasion.

Our next meeting will be on Wednesday March 12th, again at 2pm, after which for the lighter, brighter (hopefully ! ) months we revert to our more customary time of 7.30pm

BISHOPSWOOD

The February meeting of the Bishopswood WI was surprisingly well attended as the weather, like most of January and February was horrendous, with the field in front of the hall flooded really badly, and the wind blowing the rain sideways.  So, when 26 members including 2 visitors attended we were very pleased.  We do not have a meeting in January, but usually try to have a lunch out then, in order to keep in touch.  This year 36 of us went to the Beechwood Restaurant and the Royal Forest of Dean College and it was excellent.

The meeting opened as usual with a rendition of 'Jerusalem', followed by the business meeting.  We were reminded of Craft club next Wednesday (19th) at the hall, the new banner for the institute is coming along well, and we intend to finalise the design.  There were also reminders for various events coming up, events at the village hall, our institute's 95th anniversary birthday party in March and news of our 'twinned' institutes, Moreton-on-Lugg and Bishops Cleeve.  We then had tea, which was a departure from the usual tea and biscuits, and a celebration of Valentine's day with a heart shaped chocolate and a glass of 'pink fizz' which was delicious.

We did not have a speaker for this meeting and had decided that it would be nice to bring along the scrapbooks for our institute which are really interesting, particularly for our newer members, lots of very old photographs etc.  We also had a 'craft tasting' session.  Mrs Jackson was demonstrating a different way to create a rag rug, which was relatively easy to do and very effective  Mrs Mapp had handmade cards to demonstrate, and Mrs Eglinton had brought materials, patterns and instruction sheets to teach people to crochet.  Members were welcome to watch or have a go.  All in all a very sociable way to spend what was a very wet afternoon!  The meeting closed at 4.15pm as we were keeping an eye on the weather and were mindful that the roads were getting worse.  The next meeting is on March 14th at 2.30pm, the speaker is Averil Kear with the second part of a talk on the Forest of Dean entitled 'Industrial Dean part 2'.  All are very welcome.

WELLINGTON

February's talk on patchwork and quilting was a visual feast with our speaker, Jill Hollingsworth, showing us dozens of examples of the craft, with many bed spreads that we wished we had in our own homes!  We followed her descriptions of cutting out, and the patterns that are put together to create a quilt, and envied Jill's creativity and aptitude.

HOLMER travelled back to the 1920's during their February meeting with Colette Gray's wonderful collection of ladies fashion and dressing table accessories.  They certainly brought back many memories just seeing the items that perhaps our mothers or grandmothers would have owned.