PRESIDENT Jill Warner read out several items from the County News, including the autumn council meeting and Christmas craft fair.

Details for the trip to Oxford were finalised and members said they had enjoyed the group walk around Alvechurch.

A show of hands suggested there would be a lot of support for a guest demonstration on making Christmas decorations in November.

Members were reminded to support the cake, book and craft stalls at the Wythall Carnival on August 10th.

The next meeting in August will be an auction for club funds.

The speaker was Margaret Brown, better known under her professional name of Maggie Cotton, percussion player with the CBSO.

Her talk, Do butterflies sing?, was about her project work in schools taking music to young children who had not been involved in classical music before.

This developed into working in schools for the profoundly deaf and bringing an experience of music to these children.

She spoke movingly about the children being able to feel the vibrations of different instruments but she also had amusing anecdotes to tell.

After tea, Sheila Smith gave a brief description of her day at the Albert Hall and how the voting went on the resolutions discussed at the May meeting. All had been passed with little objection.