July is when we indulge ourselves with strawberries and fizz at our summer party.

Unfortunately some of these photos are a little blurry but hey, that’s just what happens when our president drinks several cups of cava in quick succession!

A fantastic selection of food was brought by members and there were bottles and bottles of delicious alcoholic and non-alcoholic fizz and 20 punnets of strawberries from Holts, our lovely local greengrocer.

Our planned vintage hair demonstration had to be cancelled due to our guest being ill but committee member and networker extraordinaire, Isla worked a last minute miracle and managed to get us cabaret singer Kiki De Ville. Kiki has sung all over the world, has appeared on BBC’s The Voice and was recently voted UK Vintage Personality Of The Year.

Kiki told us her moving and inspirational life story and then serenaded us with several songs.

Eating & drinking while Kiki belts out a song.

Most months we play a quick round of Stand Up, Sit Down bingo to raise money for our charity of the year. This month’s prize was a voucher for a massage generously donated by local business, The Banyan Tree and we are grateful to them for supporting our fundraising efforts.

After hearing Kiki’s story, we made the snap decision to donate July’s bingo money to Derian House Children’s Hospice, an organisation who supported Kiki and her husband through the tragic loss of their baby son who was born with a rare genetic condition. Shockingly, Kiki told us that children’s hospices in the UK only receive a fraction of the funding that adult hospices receive, perhaps because people find it so painful to acknowledge the loss of children. Kiki is on a mission to change that and we were happy to raise a little bit of money for the hospice as well as helping to raise awareness on this blog.

Many of us were visibly moved by Kiki’s story but there was plenty of fun to balance out the pathos.

Ruth doing ‘vintage hair’ on Fliss with foil from the many opened cava bottles.

Former president, Caroline, getting a bit cheeky with a cake pop…

… and giving Helen the giggles.

Crochet, chat and lots of cake.

Sadly we don’t have a picture but Karen’s amazing gin and tonic cake went down an absolute storm. Here’s the recipe. We may be a more modern WI but cake is still vitally important to us!

Our next party is at Christmas but there are lots of exciting meetings to come before then, please check out our events page for details.