Welcome to the October 2007 issue of Great Baddow Online Newsletter

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Introduction

For newcomers to the site, this newsletter is circulated monthly to registered site members and friends, to supplement information on the site itself. Please forward to colleagues and other interested individuals in order to publicise the site. If you are a recent newcomer to the site, welcome - your readership is appreciated.

Recent developments

The overhaul commenced last month has continued and new features this month are:

• Addition of a RSS feed on the home page
• An update to the Advertisements page

RSS feed on the home page

Following last month's creation of a RSS folder with information about RSS, we have now added a direct feed at the top right corner of  the home page immediately under the date!

Update to Advertisements page

The advertisements page has now been prefaced by an introductory index which lists classifications,  individual advertisers together with their telephone contact numbers. The advertiser name links to the corresponding advertisement.

Removal of old, inactive content

Out of date content including old discussion forums from 2006 and the shopping mall have been removed. The latter has been replaced by the business index, which has itself been updated.  

Other news this month

Congratulations to two village  organisations which celebrate important anniversaries. The Theatre at Baddow celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary and the Federation of Essex Women's Institutes FEWI, was formed in 1917 and now has around 250 WIs with some 9,500 members. This year FEWI celbrates 90 glorious years  Details below.

Theatre at Baddow

The drama group in Great Baddow started in 1982 and since then has grown strongly and now stages 3 productions a year. Initial enthusiasm and willingness to try a variety of dramatic forms resulted in a team that was and remains willing to attack most forms of the art from comedy to drama.

However, since the 1990s the group has concentrated on plays. In doing so, the quality has enabled the group to gain awards and continue to strive for improvement.

The group is always willing to welcome newcomers for its productions – usually in January, May and October and invites you to contact them either via their website or by email to: theatreatbaddow@tiscali.co.uk.

90 glorious years

The Federation of Essex Women's Institutes celebrated 90 glorious years with a show of the same name held at the Marconi club on 21 and 22 September 2007. The following is a summary review of the show, the full review is available on the website.

There was plenty to amuse, educate, and enjoy, as well as a high standard of performance. The show comprised a number of  parts, each part comprising a narrated introduction with songs and sketches for each of the decades, from the founding in 1917 through the 20s and 30s up to the present day and beyond.

The show provided plenty of laughs although some sketches succeeded better than others. "Ladies of the night" was one of the best for its parody on the ladies of doubtful reputation. The final sketch 'Back to the future' which envisaged a WI in 2030 situated on another planet, deserved an award for the most ridiculous costumes.

A variety show requires lots of costumes and there were many to match the successive themes, from tap dancing a la Charleston in the 20s, to Rock and Roll in the 50s. Overall, the mix of comedy, music and dance was highly entertaining and the groups should be encouraged to repeat this style of show at intervals, despite the considerable effort required to produce and stage.  The Essex Federation and we the spectators should thank the participating WIs and their supporters wholeheartedly, for such an enjoyable show.

Additional features

The introduction of featured articles and the navigation review are postponed but will be introduced next month (November)

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