A surprise visit from Gail Porter

On Wednesday 28 January 2009, the famous TV presenter Gail Porter paid a surprise visit to JDA to talk about her life to the JDA Wednesday Club members.

Gail is well known for presenting family programmes such as the ‘Top of the Pops’, ‘Live and Kicking’ and ‘The Big Breakfast’.

Being so cheerful and positive, she spoke about her ups and downs, her battles with depression and having alopecia (loss of hair).  Being bald, Gail now refuses to wear a hat or wig, preferring to raise awareness of alopecia which affects quite a number of people.

Gail also spoke about funny episodes of her life, especially the time when
her famous image of her naked behind was projected on the exterior of the Houses of Parliament  by the FHM company who wanted people to vote for her as one of the top FHM 100 Sexiest Women Poll in 1999.   She did not know about it until it was reported in the newspaper and how shocked her family was!

It was lovely to have been visited by Gail. We all warmed to her and thoroughly enjoyed her humorous and stimulating talk.

Kay Kaufman

Bring and Buy Sale

The Wednesday Club Committee held a Bring and Buy Sale on 10 December 2008 to raise money towards activities for the Day Centre.  The event was a rip-roaring success – easy shopping and great bargains for everyone!  Thanks to all the members who organised this.

Here is Miriam Solomon’s report:

A few weeks before our Bring and Buy Sale, Helen Eisen asked the Wednesday Club members to bring or donate anything new or good as new - clothing, gifts, household items, etc.

We were quickly overwhelmed with a wide range of offerings!!

The day before the sale, Helen Eisen, Jody Sacks and I were very busy sorting out the goods.  Helen estimated the prices on each item, I wrote the labels and Jody stuck them on!  It took a good while to do this work but in the end, it was worthwhile.

We had two large tables on which to lay out all the lovely things and a clothing rail lent to us by Danielle from the JDA staff.  There were so many items, we ran out of space.

On the day of the sale, the morning was a viewing time and I am sure many of us had an eager eye on what we wanted to buy as soon as the sale got under way!

We made a lot of sales and also organised an auction of quite a few larger items which brought in a good sum of money.  Everyone enjoyed the bidding at the auction!

All in all, we raised about £248 which was put into the Wednesday Club coffers.