THE President was delighted to welcomed 58 members and guests and also two teenagers to the September meeting. She reported that the last meeting had been a great success, despite the fact that we had to hold it in the village hall instead of Jane and David Williams-Thomas lovely garden.

The speaker was then introduced – Yvonne Everest a chocolatier. Yvonne was great fun and an obvious enthusiast in the art of chocolate making. After trying various crafts she eventually decided that working with chocolate would be the best outlet for her need to be creative. Her business, “The Chocolate Tree”, is now thriving and recently her husband has retired so he is able to help in many ways such as making moulds for the more unusual pieces. The main outlets are food fairs and farm shops and obviously Easter and Christmas events are very busy for them. She has developed many novelty items such as quirky animal lollipops, high-heeled shoes, “make-up” kits (which look like the real thing but edible), music cards and many more. She explained that after melting the Belgian chocolate, which she buys in blocks, she then has to “temper” it to give it that final glossy appearance. This took a lot of practice and patience at first but was finally mastered. We admired the way Yvonne had mastered the scientific skills of the chocolatier and we loved her individual and creative flair, which made the talk so much fun. Judith Hunter gave the vote of thanks.

On September 6 the Village bi-annual fete was held on a lovely dry, sunny day. Members had generously donated gifts for the tombola - bottles for the adult tombola and jars of sweets and small items for the children – making a grant profit of £330. Inside the marquee the “What we do at Ashton WI” exhibition was set up. A practice run for the second appearance at the Annual Council Meeting on September 16. This created great interest and hopefully encourage new members to join Ashton WI!

We continued this busy month with a tea-party held at Pershore to celebrate the arrival of the centenary baton from Malvern and Severn Group to then go to the Worcester group. It arrived in a bright yellow Morgan car with the WFWI Chairman, Christine Hickman-Smith aboard. Marjy and Judith acted as stewards and Molly entertained everyone on the grand piano at St. Andrews Hall during tea. There was a brass band, the Mayor of Pershore, together with the Town Crier who loudly pronounced the arrival of the baton!

On September 16 several members attended the WFWI Annual Council Meeting at Malvern. The first speaker was Dave Healey known as “Blind Dave of West Bromwich”, accompanied by his guide dog Seamus. Dave is obviously a borne story teller and his stories of the incredible things he has achieved – water and snow skiing, horse riding, driving round Brands Hatch at 92 m.p.h., riding a motor bike with his wife Debbie, driving a locomotive on the Severn Valley Railway and so on … the list of his “daring dos” was endless and he was a very inspiring and humorous speaker. The main speaker was Christine Walkden of BBC`s Gardeners World. After coming from a family who was not in the least interested in gardening, she took on an allotment, whilst still at school, for 2/6d. Leaving school with five CSEs – all ungraded – she doggedly made and seized every opportunity to become a gardener and blagged her way into all sorts of jobs, which gave her tremendous experience , eventually ending up as a well known broadcaster on radio and TV. Again a very humorous and uplifting story.

The exhibition the busy sub-committee had completed was displayed - “What we do at Ashton WI” - and it was interesting to note how other Institutes had created their displays. .Doreen Parsons, one of our newer members deservedly won first in the floral art and was presented with a trophy by Christine Walkden. Well done Doreen!

The monthly walk had been arranged by Carol Tyler and began at Kemerton, then up the Hill past Bells Castle and down into Overbury. A short walk to Conderton where Lunch was enjoyed at the Yew Tree.

To complete a VERY busy and active month seven members and four husbands joined the Vale Group visit to Bletchley Park on September 24. Two coach loads began the journey to Buckinghamshire at am,arriving at 11am to begin a most interesting day exploring this recently remodelled visitor centre. The restored buildings and exhibits were very atmospheric and it was apparent how tirelessly the codebreakers had to work during the War. We were able to explore the restored huts “decode” messages using the very latest technology on interactive screens, and enjoy a demonstration of the giant decoding machine used in World War tTwo – the Turin-Welchman Bombe machine. (Far too mind boggling for most of us!)

PHEW! Who said WI was boring?

JEN CREESE

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