Cleaned court and bowled

Our speaker this month was Neil Weyham, an extremely active and busy man. As he gave us a potted history of his life so far, clues to the title of his talk were revealed. Neil's first job was for a Birmingham stockbroker after an academically unsuccessful time at secondary school. Eventually he made it on to the stock exchange floor as a trainee but this was a short lived career, as Neil handed his notice in after being furious with the poor pay increase.

In 1978, Reckitt and Coleman were his new employers. We were reminded of products like Cardinal - a red tile polish, Goldilocks the pan scourer and Tinkerbell the window cleaner. More recent Reckitt and Coleman products include Mr. Sheen, Lemsip, Nurofen and Fybogel. Neil spent 13 years working for this company as a rep where he doubled his salary and travelled around in a shiny red Ford Escort. In 1991 Neil was made redundant and started looking around for employment. He investigated the franchise market and eventually settled on Chemdry, and Neil now operates a franchise advertised as "Cathedral Chemdry", a name many of the readers will recognise. Neil had a few stories to tell about his life as an upholstery cleaner. After being left alone to work in a house reputed to be haunted he imagined movement of a door handle. As he investigated further a figure appeared in the doorway. It was only the homeowner’s 18 year old son emerging from his bedroom at some time in the afternoon!

The "Court" part of his life refers to his position as a magistrate. One incident involved an Irish character charged with shoplifting. After taking the witness stand and holding the bible to take the oath he repeated the words "nothing but the truth" as "anything but the truth"! Neil also works for Edgbaston Cricket Ground during the season. He had visited an elderly lady to clean sofas and it had come up in conversation that she also was a cricket fan. Test matches were coming up and she said she was going to spectate. After asking her which ones she was going to see Neil was astonished to find that she had tickets for all 5 tests and all 5 days of each - not so surprising when it was discovered her son in law was a prominent Australian cricket player! Neil finished his talk with reference to a slogan competition being run by Lichfield Mercury. The winning slogan was" Being masters of their trade, their cleaning is of the highest grade". The title of the talk finally made sense.

During the meeting the Denman bursary was drawn. Jane Bradley was the lucky winner. Final arrangements were made for the May Market and the birthday meeting. We were given details of several outings planned for later in the year. These include a Coronation tea, Plas Cadnant the hidden garden in Anglesey and the Great Food Debate. We also discussed and voted on the resolution "Decline of our High Streets and Town Centres". The vote was unanimous that the WI should tackle the decline of our town centres.

Our next meeting is on June 12th. This is a birthday meeting so will be for members only. We will meet again on 10th July when the speaker will be Paul Newsham on Biometrics. Visitors are very welcome. For further details please contact Penny Bailey through the link below.