SHWI Getaway III: This Time it's Personal

So once again I have returned from the SHWI Getaway. I am writing my account of the weekend from my sofa, curtains closed on the beautiful sunny day outside, swaddled in my classy brown  dressing gown and jogging bottoms, RuPaul’s Drag Race soothingly providing the background noise, a Square crisp sandwich and a can of Diet Coke on the table in front of me. Basically, this year, rather than trying to recreate the atmosphere of the weekend through words, I am stubbornly refusing to believe that I am not in Currer Laithe and am actually attempting to physically re-enact farm life. I think I’m doing pretty well. I have the comfy clothes, hangover beverage, ‘nutritious’ food sources and a load of beautiful cross-dressers in my eye-line (more of which to come)...

Photo by Seven Hills WI

As usual, Friday night was pot luck buffet night. As usual, there was too much food. And as usual it was fitness personified. I hope you don’t think I’m being a bit blasé in skimping on my description of a SHWI pot luck supper, because as we know, there ain’t no buffet like a SHWI-made buffet (slogan copyright A. Pilson, SHWI Getaway 2 blog post, 2014). However, if I start raving about every dish, I’ll never stop! Suffice to say, we had enough left over for Carolyne and Tebble’s Patented Packed Lunches the next day. So what of the evening’s entertainment? Well, as usual, ice-breaker games took place, as usual they were, er, revelatory and as usual, I will decline to divulge any further information and move swiftly on…

The gang at the Bronte Parsonage

 A rainy Saturday saw us heading back to Haworth and revisiting the Bronte Parsonage for a talk and walk. Despite having visited the Parsonage on our first Getaway, we heard a completely original talk on the Bronte family, thanks to the fantastically knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff member who led our activities. We enjoyed listening to tales of the lives and personalities of each of the Bronte family, as well as discussing our perceptions of the picture sources in the presentation and I personally was chuffed to drool over the Lord Byron pics. He kind of reminds me of a cross between Mr Darcy, Henry Cavill and Michael Fassbender...sigh. Anyway, I digress. By the time we had finished our talk, the drizzle had done one and we were able to enjoy a guided walking tour of the village, taking in some of the Brontes’ favourite haunts. These included the spot where Charlotte used to secretly rendez-vous with her future husband Arthur Bell Nicholls, who was initially perceived as undesirably too low-class a match for Charlotte. A little like Charlotte’s most famous heroine, Jane Eyre, and Mr Rochester but in reverse, if you will.

Photo by Ellie Last

 Whilst I would love to continue with my literary musings further, alas I must revert to detailing the weekend. Although, I’d just like to point out that if we accept that Kirsty is SHWI’s own amalgamation of Michael Winner and Jay Rayner due to her take-no-prisoners judging role on the Great British Menu (and swarthy good looks, of course), then through that critique I must SURELY qualify as our own Mark Kermode? What with my retro (i.e. dated) hairdo and dead good knowledge of films and that. DISCLAIMER: I was going to compare myself to one of the world’s premiere literary critics, but, erm, I couldn’t think of one, so I turned to my trusty pal Google. That came up with the name Salvatore Quasimodo and I just couldn’t see ANY similarities between me and that namesake AT ALL. AND NEITHER CAN ANY OF YOU, ALRIGHT? AND YES, I’M AWARE THAT JANE EYRE IS A BOOK BUT THERE HAVE BEEN ABOUT 20 MILLION FILM VERSIONS OF THE VARIOUS BRONTE WORKS, SO I CAN GET AWAY WITH LINKING IT TO CINEMA, OK? Phew, glad we got that straight.

Now where were we? Ah yes, Saturday night… Our fancy dress theme for this year was men. Yeah, you read it correctly, men. I mean, given that this year has been all about celebrating the wonders of sisterhood through the WI centenary, it seemed only right that we acknowledged that men have done some decent stuff too - through the respectful medium of drag, naturally. And who’d have thought given the delicate femininity that exudes from the pores of every SHWI member (moi especially), that we’d make such HOT blokes? We had historical hunks (Thor), geektastic guys (Einstein), movie men (Rambo, Garth Algar and Frank N Furter), literary lads (the Bard himself), AND (tenuous phonics alert) tuneful chaps (The King, Freddie Mercury, Conchita Wurst, Adam Ant), televisual todger-owners - GROAN, jeez Pilson – (including the Hoff, Father Ted Crilly, Marcus Wareing, Michael O’Hare, 118 man, Richard O’Brien) and, OF COURSE, no evening would be complete without a sexy drag mermaid.
 

Photo by Ellie Last

Saturday night proved to be a potentially life-changing experience for me. Firstly I immediately began to question my sexuality when I saw Grace’s ruff (snigger). Honestly, who knew Shakespeare was so damn shexy? (Imagine this said in Sean Connery voice and then the spelling makes sense, honest guv). But it must be stated, I was certainly not the only one to find my hormones pulsing in a most unexpected manner. In fact, it turned out that I, as Marcus Wareing, was responsible for most of the, er, ‘confusion’ felt by some of the ladies. Look, I’ll be blunt – it turns out I am one damn fine specimen of manhood. Who’d have thought during all these years of waging a constant battle against my body hair, that if I’d just let it grow to its hirsute heart’s content I’d have been a STUD? All I can say is I’ve never felt more like myself than when wearing chef whites, having a face-full of stubble and bellowing in my best angry Cockney accent. Sigh…

Grace and Sam the sheep dog - Photo by Ellie Last

 Once again, I’m afraid I cannot reveal any more of the night’s shenanigans, so I shall move onto Sunday (but I’ve got to just say: Holly, Tebble, Corinne - Marcus enjoyed your moves). The order of the day was a lazy morning for some, a trip to Saltaire for others and some serious veg prep for the rest. This toil resulted in a once-again EPIC Sunday roast, with particular props going to the team for the care taken to cater for us veggies, many thanks. This year quite a few people had to depart on
the Sunday evening, leaving a small group of us to enjoy a quiet evening of reflection. By which of course I mean we caned the Singstar for approximately 5 hours. We discovered that most people had fairly decent pipes on them, that Zoe is now probably addicted to karaoke and that pretty much any song can be improved if performed in an angry Cockney or jaunty German accent…

So Monday arrived and due to clock-change confusion, we ended up leaving mega-early. But it’s probably for the best given that every year it gets harder to leave. For serious, man. So once again HUGE thanks to Kirsty and Grace for their organisation skills and thanks to all the ladies (and gents) for their fantastic company. I feel massively privileged to have been lucky enough to attend all 3 Getaways so far and feel that I should probably be magnanimous enough in 2016 to stand back and let others attend. HAAAAAAAA! AS IF! Roll on Getaway 4! Because, to be honest, the fact that I have to be female to attend the SHWI Getaway is pretty much the only thing stopping me hotfooting it to Tijuana to get the op to turn into Marcus full time…

Photo by Laura Bainbridge

By Anna Pilson
Committee Member

Out on the wily, windy moors at the SHWI Getaway

Inspirational women fancy dress, from Anneka Rice to the Virgin Mary...

So I wrote this having been back from the inaugural SHWI Getaway for about 24 hours. I spent spent pretty much all of those hours (and the ones since) looking at photos of the Getaway, talking to fellow SHWI-ers about the Getaway, chuckling to myself about the Getaway, pondering wistfully about the fact that I am no longer at the Getaway and of course, watching Jane Eyre! Sigh. But rather than moping to myself, I thought I should instead try to capture the experience for posterity in this blog entry (well, it’s practically a love letter to the weekend really, sob).

We all set off in convoy on Friday from a very rainy and windy Sheffield and headed to West Yorkshire to Currer Laithe farm, the venue for our weekend of discussion, culture and refinement (!). Our forthcoming pot luck buffet, the company of SHWI ladies and a roaring fire certainly constituted a welcome arrival (particularly those who had braved the cobbled hill of doom en route). We then spent a sedate (ish) evening of chatting and laughing together as outside the wind howled across the Bronte-esque moors surrounding us.

The Bronte talk

That bit of GCSE A grade-standard descriptive writing leads us nicely to the activity planned for us the next day. We headed across to the picturesque town of Haworth to indulge in a spot of sightseeing at the Bronte Parsonage (although, to be honest, this was almost derailed by our spotting of Oscar, Haworth’s premier celebrity cat, and our subsequent feline-worship). But, eventually, to the Bronte parsonage we headed. We first embarked on a self-guided tour of the parsonage, which involved actually being in the very rooms where ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Wuthering Heights’ were written (eek) and er, getting overexcited by bonnets. We were then privileged enough to receive our own private talk about the history of the Brontes by a very knowledgeable and fascinating member of the Parsonage staff. In it we learned (apart from the history of the Bronte family) that poor Charlotte Bronte had bad teeth, Anne Bronte’s favourite holiday destination was Scarborough and that Lord Byron was FIT. I would highly recommend planning a talk if you visit the Parsonage, it was excellent. We followed this up by visiting the church where all of the Brontes are buried (except Anne), having a nice cuppa stop in a local craft fayre, sampling the local sweets and buying Haworth out of jewellery (cough, cough Zoe Loveday!). 

Before heading home, we thought it only right that we honoured the Bronte brother, Branwell, in his local drinking establishment, the Black Bull (they still have his seat, fact fans). That’s us SHWI ladies, all about respecting the history.

The view from Currer Laithe

Saturday night was party night with a theme of inspirational women. Once again highlighting the fantastic creativity within SHWI, we had costumes covering icons from ancient civilisations (Cleopatra and the Virgin Mary), sports stars (Billie Jean King), peerless politicians (Betty Boothroyd), historical heroines (Pocahontas and Rosie the Riveter), literary legends (Charlotte Bronte and Agatha Christie), scintillating statues (Lady Liberty), personal protagonists (Aunt Patsy and, erm, Anna Pilson), pop powerhouses (Dolly Parton and Kate Bush), childhood idols (sorry, ran out of alliterative vocab here but I’m getting overexcited about the immenseness of Anneka frickin’ RICE) and last but certainly not least, the living legend that is shoulder-pad wearer extraordinaire, Hilary Devey. We then indulged in some party games (all good, clean fun, er, honest guv) and while I would LOVE to tell you more about the escapades of that evening, I must adhere to the sacred oath of ‘what happens on SHWI Getaway, stays on SHWI Getaway’…

Sunday arrived and with it the prospect of a walk to blow away the cobwebs and of course, to explore the rugged moorland scenery. A good, hearty splash in the mud and the country air was enjoyed by all (except for the equestrian centre owner, but that’s another story…) and revved up our appetites for the much-anticipated SHWI Sunday lunch. It was a veritable feast, cooked with panache by Grace, Kirsty and Zoe, after being prepared by Laura, SHWI’s own Delia Smith (or should that be Monica Galetti?). The rest of the day was devoted to a relaxation-fest, comprising of chocolate, liqueur coffees, reality TV and board games (which my team won – naturally).

And then – Monday. It was a blue Monday for all as we reluctantly packed and set about tidying away our visit at Currer Laithe. We were no sooner in our cars than we had begun reminiscing about the amazing time we had all had that weekend. And it truly was a fabulous weekend from start to finish. I know I speak on behalf of all of the attendees when I say a massive THANK YOU to Getaway organisers Ruth and Grace. You truly made a lot of ladies very happy and planned a weekend of epic, nay, legendary proportions!

P.S. Notice how I said it was the ‘inaugural’ Getaway in the opening sentence? Well that’s because within hours of returning from the Getaway some of us were already planning the next one! Watch this space for more details over the coming months…

Anna Pilson

SHWI Committee