Party Hats!
It was party time again as we celebrated our WI’s ninety second birthday with a ‘Bring and Share’ supper. As always, members exceeded expectations with the quantity and variety of delicious food they provided and we didn’t have to wait long before tucking in as business was kept to a minimum. President Penny Bailey welcomed guests from other WIs in the Blythe Group and thanked everyone who had helped to raise £650 at the May Market. Birthday cards were read and absent friends toasted before the eating and drinking began.

After second helpings (or even ‘thirds’) we were ready to listen to our speaker Marion Baldwin who delighted us with her reminiscences, punctuated by performances in which she wore different hats and adopted the characters appropriate to each. She described when, as a scholarship girl at Barnstable Grammar School who had gained a place at drama school in London, she was told she was not allowed on stage until she had lost her West Country accent. She spent the first term learning to copy the speech of her debutante room-mate who was using the college as a finishing school until she “came out”. At Christmas her mother was delighted with her daughter’s new persona and couldn’t wait to show her off to the people of Barnstable but sadly on her return to college she found that this extreme ‘upper-crust’ accent was equally unacceptable and had to be ‘unlearned’. Now she switches accents and characters with such talent and humour that we found her very entertaining and often hilarious.
Her description of her classroom and teacher during World War II and the disruption caused by seven small boys evacuated from London brought back memories to some of our members and introduced the first of her performances. She donned a schoolboy’s cap and recited a very amusing description of a cow by a young evacuee which had been read out in a BBC News Bulletin in 1939 to reassure parents that their children were happy and learning about the countryside. She also recited the marriage proposal scene from ‘The Young Visiters’ by Daisy Ashford and entertained us with the reaction to it from her sixth form students who assured her that “It isn’t like that now Miss!”
Marion’s other pieces were the humourous yet moving description of the two grannies in “Cider with Rosie” by Laurie Lee, (in a hat which her mother had worn on her honeymoon) and finally a glorious delivery of “When I am old I shall wear purple” by Jenny Joseph, wearing of course the red hat from the second line of the poem which prompted discussions on what used to be associated with a woman wearing a red hat! She made our birthday meeting special and it was obvious that members were interested in engaging her for other events. She asks only for a donation for charity and has raised more than a thousand pounds from WIs alone towards establishing a memorial for the Land Girls of World War II at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas.
Our next meeting is on July 11th when Mike Fawdrey will talk about the Mission Aviation Fellowship in “What is MAF? Visitors are very welcome and further information can be obtained from Penny Bailey at the link below.