December

Christmas Flower Arrangements

Lynn Sleet from Blooming Useful Floral Designs demonstrated how to make different Christmas table centres varying from the traditional to modern. She made it look so easy and gave us lots of ideas and useful tips so that we could try some at home.

November

Zumba

Rocio Beaumont put us through our paces for this very energetic activity. Despite the groans, red faces, losing our places in the routines and total exhaustion we really enjoyed ourselves!

October

This was meant to be a talk by Colour Me Beautiful but the lady’s car broke down. Nothing daunted, the amazing Amanda Webster-Robbins stepped into the gap and fascinated us with an impromptu talk about her colourful career with the police including her time at Scotland Yard. The committee now brings a quiz and Bingo to meetings just in case this happens again!
Also, despite our earlier meetings, this was the month we officially joined the NFWI.

September

Under the Veil

Sandra Simmonds, our speaker, was married to an Iranian and lived in Iran for many years. Everyone was enthralled by her talk which gave an insight into the life of women who live under the veil. Her experiences were both fascinating and harrowing and left us wanting to hear so much more. Fortunately this is the first of three talks on the subject so we have the others to look forward to.

August

Our summer holiday break

July

Mr Punch

A busy meeting!  Mr Punch (Ken Dalton) was the first speaker for our new WI and and gave an interesting and very amusing talk. Not only does he give Punch and Judy shows but he also makes a wide variety of puppets. It is hard to believe that until he retired he worked in banking and only did this in his spare time!. On the business side we decided to call ourselves Camberley Diamond WI. Why? We had to differentiate ourselves from Camberley WI and it was the year of the Diamond Jubilee.  Camberley Diamond WI was no longer just a twinkle in our eyes!

June

First meeting

Everyone met in St Mary’s Church Hall and we agreed to form a new WI.  Sheila Tickner and Pat Harris, the advisors from the Surrey Federation, suggested that we wait until October before becoming official as we would then only have to pay the fees for 2013. Sensible advice!

May

Discussions

At the suggestion of Liz Hughes, President of the newly formed Camberley WI, I agreed to take on their waiting list of about 70. One of the earliest replies to my emails was from Hilary Jorgensen, our Vice President, who was also keen to start a new WI. After discussions with Surrey Federation Advisors Sheila Tickner and Pat Harris and emails to everyone on the waiting list, Hilary and I decided to take the plunge.