PRESS REPORT
OVER PEOVER WOMEN’S INSTITUTE MEETING
THURSDAY 24th APRIL 2014
A very sweet rendering of Jerusalem started our April meeting. Mrs June Leech, our president took us efficiently through much business including: a successful bunting sewing session, invitations to other WIs including a visit to Port Sunlight with Plumley on 18th June, CFWI meeting at Winsford on 7th October with speaker Pru Leith, a proposed jewellery making course, canvas bags for fundraising and member Alison Maude had been sent a floral basket for her 90th birthday. Members volunteered for planting up flower tubs for the village hall and a watering rota as well as the annual spring clean of the hall on 12th June. We voted for the NFWI resolution to encourage WI members to donate their organs after death and to make their wishes known – an average of 3 people die every day waiting for an organ transplant.
Penn Roberts spoke to us about “A Cure for Nostalgia”. Early aspirations of becoming an apothecary were hardly encouraged by his first job at 17 in a Llandudno chemist where he ran errands, cleaned floors and was sent down the trapdoor to the cellar to fill glass bottles with potions and mixtures, stick labels on and wrap them in paper. He washed mortars, pestles and spatulas and learned to trichurate or grind the ingredients for pills and potions which were stored in the mahogany drawers with the latin names of the contents. He did become manager of a chemist shop and eventually owned his own in Levenhulme. We were interested to learn that maggots and leeches are still used in medicine today and a useful snippet that poison bottles were always ribbed – so you could feel it in the dark but one imagines – also useful for the visually impaired!
Rosalind Jackson and Mary Bowers provided the mouth-watering cakes and the flowers which were sent to Helen Norbury. We meet at 7.30pm on the last Thursday of the month at Over Peover Village Hall. There is a friendly and welcoming atmosphere and speakers are invariably of a very high standard as are the homemade cakes and tea to follow. New members are very welcome.
Vivienne Cunningham, Press Officer
01625 861934 gareth.viv@lineone.net