Thelma Oliver, our chairman for the day, welcomed 41 members and 3 visitors to our November meeting.

She reported that Sheila Poyner, a former member of our guild was in the process of settling in her new home in Billericay.

Thelma gave the final arrangements for our Christmas lunch at the Kings Court Hotel, COughton.

She also reminded members that our December meeting will be our Christmas party and Joyce Dennehy has again volunteered to make the necessary mince pies.

She also asked members to think about bringing in prizes for the Christmas raffle.

The monthly free raffle was held and prizes of Christmas tea towels were won by Joan Grove, Pauline Wills and Rosalind Sewell.

The committee reports were then given and Thelma confirmed that the West Midlands Federation Christmas service will be held at St Thomas’s Church, Stourbridge on December 5 at 2.15pm.

She also informed the meeting that the National AGM will again be held in Birmingham on June 14 2010.

Our speaker for the day, Mr Patrick Clement, took the floor and he gave us an interesting talk on ‘Moths and butterflies’. He illustrated his talk with the most beautiful photographs of the many and varied species of moths, currently about 2,4000 differernt ones can be found in the UK.

There are also around 60 different kinds of butterfly.

Most of our ladies learned something new from Patrick about the moth population, including the way of determining whether we are looking at a moth or a butterfly.

Everyone agreed that it had been a very interesting talk and Heather Greenland gave the official vote of thanks.

The meeting was then closed and the ladies took their usual refreshments.

Our next meeting will be our Christmas meeting and it will be at 10.30am on Wednesday, December 9 at Moose Hall, Beeches Road, Blackheath.

Visitors are always very welcome.