WI May Meeting – Pimm's and Plants

You can tell the weather is improving here in Audlem by the large number of ladies who attended Thursday night's meeting proving that our members are like flowers, we turn our faces to the sun and solar charge our batteries for another eventful evening's WI entertainment.

Daphne Mounteney was seen to stagger in with arms full of extremely healthy, but suspicious looking green plants, however we all breathed a heavy sigh of relief as a 'Tomato Plants' notice was attached to them! I know the WI is renowned for it's liberal attitudes, but this could have been a step too far...

It's true to say that women don't look as busy as men, mainly because we get it right first time, however the smooth running of our meeting was almost disrupted when our pianist June Perry, who was absent with permission, was unable to play our usual hearty rendering of 'Jerusalem.'

Undaunted Jackie Creber came forward with a confidently pointed digit to give us the first note – proving that a woman is like a tea bag; you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water!

After the usual procedural minutes and letters, read by our efficient secretary Doreen Hubbard, our ears pricked up as our President Lin Nicholas mentioned the word 'Pimm's.'

To celebrate the WI Centenary our July meeting speakers are 'The Flower Divas of Audlem,' who will be giving a talk and demonstration on '100 Years of Flower Arranging.'

This meeting will be thrown open to the public and tickets will be available from the Post Office for the princely sum of £3.50 for all non-members. Instead of our usual tea and buns, we will be serving Pimm's and nibbles and given that men believe we have driven them to drink, and they haven't had the decency to thank us, this time we can have it for ourselves!

Now we ladies of the Audlem WI know a thing or two about keeping fit, and as laughter is a form of internal jogging in our books, our monthly speaker certainly had us chuckling with glee at some of the stage mishaps she described!

Audience engagement is an essential tool for any speaker and attention spans within the WI can be increasingly short, given that there is a whole month's chitchat to catch up on!

Our speaker, Christine Fitch, only had a few minutes to pique the interest of the assembled audience of busy intelligent ladies.

Telling a well-crafted story is amongst one of the most powerful tools for a speaker and Christine Fitch, in her own unique and whimsical way captured our attention from the start.

For Christine Fitch the decision to pursue a career in musical theatre was really no decision at all – it never occurred to her to do anything else. Even as a child her life centred on singing, dancing and acting.

Success in a business which isn't often kind did not come easily for the performer, but it did come and her career spanned over fifty years taking her to some of the best stages in Europe and America for some of the brightest roles.

Her parents weren't keen on her desire to be an actor, so they were insistent that she trained as a teacher so that she had a fall back position – how often have we all said that to our rebellious offspring?

Christine began by auditioning for panto and summer shows which she considered marvellous training grounds for young actors, living in appalling digs but more importantly learning discipline and as she said, without discipline a show is lost. With this experience under her belt she felt confident enough to begin work on her ultimate goal: the elusive British Musical!

Auditions were terrible, the only thing they cared about was your last musical role and the frustration pushed Christine to the point of abandoning the stage but then the lucky break came and she played leads in such famous musicals as 'My Fair Lady,' 'The Sound of Music,' 'The Music Man,' 'Fiddler on the Roof,' The King and I,' and the one women show 'Shirley Valentine.'

Jaws were seen to drop incredulously as Christine nonchalantly incorporated famous names such as Hughie Green, Dora Bryan, Dennis Lotus, Norman Vaughan, Lesley Crowther and Judi Dench in such a blasé way that we all felt they were also part of our daily lives!

After a delicious tea and cakes provided by Helen Dunlop, Sheila Webster and Sheila Harris, our guest speaker judged our competition entries and the winner was – yes, Anne Watson again! The good news is Anne is not entering the poem competition so I'm still in with a chance!

See you all in June.

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