Articles
My first Women's Institute meeting
01/04/2012
My first Women’s Institute meeting.
At the end of April I attended my first Women's Institute meeting, yes that’s right Women's Institute meeting. This experience was somewhat different to the more male dominated societies I belong to like the motor club. It was a meeting of several WI groups hosted by St Albans City WI, to which my wife Lesley is a member, and for this meeting their men folk were invited. Imagine the scenario, me with 4 other men; husbands and a son dragged…, sorry encouraged, to attend by their ladies, along with over 70 women.
After the school bell rang the evening started with the singing of “Jerusalem”, yes I knew the words but more from Industrial Revolution reasons rather than WI connections.
The main speaker was Kathy Brown who gave a talk on Edible Flowers, somehow I can’t imagine this talk going down too well with hardened motor sport enthusiasts at the motor club. She showed us pictures of flowers expecting us to know what they were, I suppose the ladies did, and how they could be incorporated into food and concocted beverages. I’m going to keep an eye on Lesley’s meals in future in case she tries experimenting with our Daisies and Dandelions by incorporating them into sausage and mash or by decorating a pile of chips with a daffodil or anything else she can find in the garden.
After this, as you might imagine, we had tea and cakes. All the Ladies must have spent the day baking and brought their prized efforts along; I’ve never seen so many cakes. There was a lot left over resulting in the uncut ones being auctioned; as a joint effort we ended up buying one, Lesley buying it and me paying for it. The cut pieces weren’t quite so easy to deal with and with my assistance in wanting to reduce waste ended up with indigestion later. The nearest we ever got to this at the motor club was when we had a gentlemen’s baking competition where I offered a sponge, this was before I was educated to the technical term of Victoria Sponge, and was accused of baking it in 2 different size hub caps.
The evening was rounded off by a revue put on by, and starring, the hosts called “Tillie’s Tea Shop” which was the story of a group of WI ladies wanting to audition for a production of Mama Mia. This is the real reason I was there, they wanted someone to take the photos, I think they thought I had connections with Reuters and the world press. On the other hand I wondered if they wanted images along the lines of a certain WI calendar. Lesley, who you might think of as a respectable lady, didn’t take too much persuasion to take the part of Mavis, the lady wanting to audition for the part played by Meryl Streep in the film version. The performance and the evening went well although Lesley now has several appointments booked at the chiropodist and hopes her feet will have recovered before they open in the West End later in the year.
Stafford Steed
At the end of April I attended my first Women's Institute meeting, yes that’s right Women's Institute meeting. This experience was somewhat different to the more male dominated societies I belong to like the motor club. It was a meeting of several WI groups hosted by St Albans City WI, to which my wife Lesley is a member, and for this meeting their men folk were invited. Imagine the scenario, me with 4 other men; husbands and a son dragged…, sorry encouraged, to attend by their ladies, along with over 70 women.
After the school bell rang the evening started with the singing of “Jerusalem”, yes I knew the words but more from Industrial Revolution reasons rather than WI connections.
The main speaker was Kathy Brown who gave a talk on Edible Flowers, somehow I can’t imagine this talk going down too well with hardened motor sport enthusiasts at the motor club. She showed us pictures of flowers expecting us to know what they were, I suppose the ladies did, and how they could be incorporated into food and concocted beverages. I’m going to keep an eye on Lesley’s meals in future in case she tries experimenting with our Daisies and Dandelions by incorporating them into sausage and mash or by decorating a pile of chips with a daffodil or anything else she can find in the garden.
After this, as you might imagine, we had tea and cakes. All the Ladies must have spent the day baking and brought their prized efforts along; I’ve never seen so many cakes. There was a lot left over resulting in the uncut ones being auctioned; as a joint effort we ended up buying one, Lesley buying it and me paying for it. The cut pieces weren’t quite so easy to deal with and with my assistance in wanting to reduce waste ended up with indigestion later. The nearest we ever got to this at the motor club was when we had a gentlemen’s baking competition where I offered a sponge, this was before I was educated to the technical term of Victoria Sponge, and was accused of baking it in 2 different size hub caps.
The evening was rounded off by a revue put on by, and starring, the hosts called “Tillie’s Tea Shop” which was the story of a group of WI ladies wanting to audition for a production of Mama Mia. This is the real reason I was there, they wanted someone to take the photos, I think they thought I had connections with Reuters and the world press. On the other hand I wondered if they wanted images along the lines of a certain WI calendar. Lesley, who you might think of as a respectable lady, didn’t take too much persuasion to take the part of Mavis, the lady wanting to audition for the part played by Meryl Streep in the film version. The performance and the evening went well although Lesley now has several appointments booked at the chiropodist and hopes her feet will have recovered before they open in the West End later in the year.
Stafford Steed