Check out out Clare Farquhar, our President, and Isabel Aldrich, secretary, with Ben Jackson on his BBC Radio Leicester programme on Thursday 22nd September.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes 

Ben had been swapping jam and offering WI cake all week around Leicestershire.  MHWI rose to the challenge offering a wide variety of goodies made by our lovely members.

The ladies had a wonderful time chatting to Ben throughout the afternoon.  They shared history of the Institute and how MHWI began.  Ben teased Clare about her lack of baking and jam making skills and wanted to know why Isabel had chosen not to share her beloved gooseberry jam!!

There were lots of lovely people from the town to chat to and share cake with.  It was a wonderful experience.

Some of our intrepid MHWI ladies, ever willing to try something new, signed up to try out Pilates and Hula Hooping this week as part of the NFWI Sports Week initiative.  On Wednesday 14th September, the wonderful Jane Fletcher gave us a Pilates taster session.  As a former ballerina, Jane has been practising Pilates for many years and decided 3 years ago to qualify as a teacher. jane-fletcher-pilates.pilatesnearyou.co.uk  She was very gentle with us all, making sure that each  exercise suited our individual needs.  We were all highly impressed and would recommend Jane as a teacher.  Although this was a low impact session, we can all confirm that we felt it the next day!

Friday, 16th September was a whole different kettle of fish, Hula Hooping with Rae, was more of a HaHa Whooping session!😝 Hysterically funny!  Some of us mastered the movement, some of us didn’t!  Clare and Carmen decided that body shape was definitely the key…well that’s our excuse anyway!

Rae, from doedemure.co.uk was a brilliant teacher, who is a hula hoop artiste.  We were incredulous, as we swung our bums and tums in all directions in a hope of keeping the hoop circling, whilst she barely seemed to move her torso, yet kept her hoop twirling as if by magic!

Some of the ladies managed to advance to walking and hula at the same time! Caroline and the Jo’s were particularly good…Carmen and Clare looked on in envy!

Evanda managed to hula in both directions. And her young daughter just showed us all up!

Bridget just kept tenaciously at it, with splendid results.

When we moved onto the hand routine, Carmen and Clare came into their own😜.  We all twirled, changed hands, rotated, spun and jumped through hoops.  It all looked quite professional by the end…though a few stray hoops were seen rolling from one side of the hall to the other on occasion! Annabel and the Jo’s were true all rounders, and we will let you know if they run off to join the circus!

Thank you to the teachers and members who joined in these sessions last week. It was an excellent experience, with all the usual MHWI fun and laughter!  Don’t forget that October meeting is Samba night!