WI At the Carnival

Audlem WI Carnival – Everyone a winner!

Life is like a carnival ride. You can play it safe and ride the merry-go-round and have a predictable life or take a different approach and ride the rollercoaster for all it's glory and thrills, it's ups and downs, twists and turns, and rushes.

Yep...that pretty much sums up my life so far!

After all, carnivals bring out the child in everyone – even though I'm old enough to make my own decisions but am still not young enough to remember what I decided!

'Jam and Jerusalem' depicts your average WI, but our Audlem members break that mould.

Everyone is born with an instinct for success and the ability to make it, but only the ones who think out of the box succeed, so with this in mind we decided our carnival stall would be different this year although we would include the traditional elements of cakes and jams as we wouldn't want to upset the good people of Audlem who may have started to hyperventilate should we not have a traditional element on view on our stall!

Now, working in a team means you spend half your time convincing others that your idea is better than theirs and ideas don't stay long in my head as they don't like solitary confinement and I can often be seen talking to myself when I need expert advice.

However this year, in collaboration with some of the brightest Audlem brains, ( our committee ) we came up with the idea of a tombola consisting of wrapped presents, kindly donated by our members with only the occasional twist of the arm, allowing every ticket purchased to be a winner – what a novel idea?

Audlem Carnival Monday arrived and with it the annual WI Gazebo 'set up' fight – I refrain from using the word 'erection' as children may be reading this! This year we had a new super duper tent and so it came to pass that Anne Hollins, who always brings her son James as he has nothing better to do than hang out with us ladies and we need his height to fix the cover on, Joyce Clydesdale and myself battled the miserable elements and finally stood back with pride to admire our completed stall.

Courtesy of Joe from Audlem Printers, we had a shiny new banner strung across the front with both children and adult wrapped presents displayed in their magnificent profusion on two sides, whilst the other side was dedicated to our more traditional wares such as cakes, jams and marmalade.

Sue Davies, became our top salesperson, working on the well-practised principle that you don't close a sale, you open a relationship! No one managed to pass by her smiling and confident approach without purchasing at least one raffle ticket. Even the AudlemOnline photographer Alvar Jones couldn't avoid Sue's appealing sales patter!

By 2.30 pm we had sold out of raffle tickets and cakes and the day was deemed a complete success!

Many thanks to all our members who wrapped and donated the presents, also those who baked the cakes and diligently wrote the ingredients on a label following our strict WI rules, and to all the willing helpers who assisted on our stall.

See you all on Thursday for our 'Open Evening' – it promises to be great!

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