We welcomed 45 members to our November meeting which included our Annual Meeting. Our planned speaker was unable to join us, but Christine Gould kindly came along and shared her experience as a volunteer for the Fairtrade Stall in Warrington Market. She set up a mini-stall for our meeting. We started the evening with the Annual Meeting. Pat shared the Financial Report demonstrating a healthy Bank Balance, while subsidising several events to ensure our members get good value for their subscription. Jean presented the annual report as a slideshow, reminding members about the very varied programmes for our main meetings,…

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Book club – our October book was ‘The Moonlight Garden ‘by Rosie Hannigan. Views on the book were mixed. Most found it an easy, fairly light read and some felt it was a bit ‘wishy washy’ with not a lot of depth to it. The average score was 6.9. Walking Group – Several members from Whitley and Dutton WI joined the CFWI fund raising walk around Delamere on National Restart a Heart Day. After a very comprehensive demonstration on how to work the equipment we did a 2.6 mile walk on the paths in the forest. Through the trees we…

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Thanks to our members night committee who ran the meeting and gave our Whitley Committee a night off. Deborah W was acting President, Mary L acting Secretary and they were joined by Mary H and Liz T. The committee was assisted by volunteers Caroline P and Vanessa D. The excellent speaker was Joanne Goodwin, editor of Cheshire Life. She talked to us about her early career in a daily Stoke newspaper, with the pressures of daily deadlines. This was in the days before the widespread use of technology, when women didn’t have any senior roles in journalism. She rose to…

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Whitley WI hosted the Village Group Autumn meeting , where Nana Funk entertained us with her quirky sense of humour and entertaining singing. She started the evening dressed as a cleaner, stripped down to her very quickly underwear and finished the evening in her sequinned dress as she accompanied herself on a ukulele as she sang songs she had created, including some which were responses to questions our group members had written down for her. A very enjoyable evening.

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Walking Group – Starting from the Village Hall nine ladies turned right down Village Lane for our September walk passing the school and then turning right down Back Lane and eventually through the fields passing sheep, horses, squashing lots of acorns under our feet on the pathway. Cow parsley was in abundance along the way and is called a different name depending on the area you live according to Annette, who has a child thought it made a great pea shooter. We turned left into Old Mill Lane and at the first corner Julia guided us right along a grassy…

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We welcomed 38 members and 1 visitor to our September meeting. Our speaker was Peter Turner with a talk entitled ‘Through the Eyes of a Magician’. Peter talked to us about ‘ magic’, explaining his approach through the world of illusion, psychology, and perception. He demonstrated a few ‘tricks’ with the help of some volunteer members. Chains tied themselves in knots, strips of material disappeared and turned up on a member’s purse and Jonty couldn’t believe the optical illusions he shared with her. A fascinating talk Susan and Pat were thanked for organising a very successful August outing to Adventure…

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This was held on Monday 1st September and was the 35th year we’ve held this competition. We had a good turn out of 16 members. Adelaide was a member of our bowls team for some years until ill-health prevented her from continuing and she donated this trophy in 1991.We had mostly good weather with just a spell of rain. Thanks to Ann Tolson (last year’s winner) and Ann Brock for organising the competition, The finalists were Ann O’Brien and Jenny Roberts who both played well in an exciting final. Jenny won this match so her name goes on the trophy…

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Baking Beauties produced various dishes using gelatine – Panna cotta, mandarin cheesecake, a full on ‘Cheese cake’ and marshmallow dusted in dried raspberries all fit the bill. The star of the afternoon was Pat with her white chocolate panna cotta and fruit jelly combination made in her Bundt tin. It looked stunning and tasted delicious – Star Baker Pat!

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The Craft group had a wonderful afternoon weaving swallows from willow. 18 members listened to Robyn from Nature Makers tell us of the buying of the willow from Somerset and the soaking of it for a few days to make it supple enough to use. We all started with a 2 metre length of willow and made the basic body shape of a bird. Admittedly some looked thin and some fat but then we began to weave the body using the basic shape and we gradually pulled it into shape. We did find that the more we worked the willow…

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Twenty five of us joined the World of Alice in Wonderland on a very pleasant August evening for a really fun time playing crazy golf. In groups of 5 it was a great opportunity to get to know our fellow members better. We progressed around the 18 holes. encountering lots of Alice themed landscaping including the Mad Hatter’s top hat, Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Teapot No particular expertise was needed, the small streams of water running though the area presented some fun challenges. The final hole, part of the deck of cards was great fun to watch. The red…

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