SOMERLEYTON WI: The July meeting started on a sad note when a minutes silence was observed in memory of member Margaret Mottram who had died recently.

On a happier note flowers were presented to Mary Quinton for her Diamond Wedding Anniversary and Liz Jinks on her 65th wedding anniversary.

Speaker for the evening was Anthony Collis who gave an interesting illustrated talk entitled 'Swinging ladies’.

His slides depicted a medley of actresses, heroines, mistresses and Queens who have graced the nations pub signs. Mr Collis gave us some very knowledgeable facts about the ladies and we learnt some very interesting about the ladies in question and their role in British history.

The competition was for members to design a pub sign based on their surnames.Those ladies who had entered had been very creative in their interpretation of the theme. The winner, with her wonderful illustration of a mallard duck, was Pat Mullard.

Refreshments over, it was time to get to the business part of the meeting. Thank you letters from our special guests who had attended the 50th birthday meal in June were read out.

Beth Milsom had also sent a generous donation to the institute to mark the occasion and members were asked to consider how best to utilise it,

The next meeting is the Annual BBQ which will be on August 8 at the Rugby Club.