Organize your own group and you go free!

Planning a girls' day out or weekend away? Why not get your own group together and customize your away day or weekend experience! You'll find some ideas to get you started on our website...Examples of events that are part of wine women and philosophy's history, but which could certainly be resurrected with a look and feel that is designed especially for you. If you are a group of 6 or more, we even have a special deal - one of you goes free! Check out our website for more details of this great offer.

Members' salon evening: Thursday 28th of January

Our first members salon evening of 2010 runs from 7:30 - 9:30 pm, and hot on the heels of the holiday season, we'll be taking a look at photographs - how they move us and why. Remember to bring along a photograph that speaks to you in some way. Drawing on the work of french writer and thinker Roland Barthes (our philosopher of the month), we'll be discussing how the concepts of "studium" and "punctum" can help us to see in our photographs something new. Come one and all. Bring a friend. See you there!

A song for you, from us...

Here is the 2009 anthem to our fabulous membership friends, our sensational salonnieres, and our dazzling weekend participants. Picking up on the Festive spirit, it is to be sung to the tune of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman"...But this is where the similarities to that old chestnut end! When we sang it at the Salon Christmas Party last Thursday, we tried to stay true to the wwp salon spirit by delivering it as a conversation. Enjoy!

DON'T MESS WITH RESTLESS MATRONS

Don't mess with restless matrons,
They are something to behold.
A Salon Eve or Weekend Leave,
Will find them acting bold,
A glass of wine
A thought divine
Ideas turn into Gold...

Oh what pride in Spa for the Mind,
Spa for the Mind,
Oh what pride in Spa for the Mind.

We've done two choral weekends,
You will find us on You-Tube.
We've belly danced and transcend-danced,
And learned about Lao-Tsu,
We've slow-cooked stews
And penned haikus
Felt belonged and bemused...

Oh it's all tried in Spa for the Mind,
Spa for the Mind,
Oh it's all tried in Spa for the Mind.

Okay, so there's a bridge club,
And a cookbook in the works.
Our membership is growing,
And our website's got no quirks,
And so we've had
A day or two
To go a bit beserks...

So what's biding for Spa for the Mind?
Spa for the Mind,
Here's what's biding for Spa for the Mind.

We've added scuba diving,
And drag racing 101.
We've got a special weekend going,
For women on the run,
We wanted to
Give Flu Shots...
But the town hall turned us down,

Here's to Wine Women and Philosophy,
W(W)P
Here's to Wine Women and Philosophy.


Wishing you all the very best of holiday seasons, and thanking you for your wonderful support during our first year of wine women and philosophy.

Linnet and Rona

Photo Gallery of Christmas Salon Evening

Watch this space!

We are putting together a photo gallery of last night's festive salon evening. In the meantime, here are a couple of photos to whet your appetite! Thanks to Kathy for leading the caroling, Pat and Sue for Ms Claus' Christmas Grotto, and other members and guests for making it such a fun evening. A wwp tradition in the making? We hope so!

Just Caroling

Thanks, Kathy, for guiding us through a fun caroling repertoire from 'In the Bleak Mid Winter' to 'Go Tell It On The Mountain' wonderful stuff! And next time we will get the piano tuned - promise!

Sisters, Janice and Elaine share a high note at the caroling weekend.

For more choral delights plug in 'wine women and song' in our search engine.

Table Talk Cookbook

We are in the process of producing wwp's first cookbook, based on favourite 'feel good' recipes from our weekends and from the kitchens of our members.

All proceeds made from the sale of the cookbook will go towards supporting the Marcelle Scholarship Fund. The cookbook committee will be going public with their ideas shortly. Make sure to check back for details in the coming weeks...

Nurtury Book and Film Club Weekend

To what, or whom, do we feel we belong? What are the necessary conditions to "feeling" belonged? And though many of us might aspire to belong, are there also drawbacks to being "in the fold"? These were just some of the questions that we explored over the course of this weekend, dipping into the terrains of home, nostalgia, longing and coming-of-age as we hammered out a collective living philosophy around belonging and experienced, in our different ways, how belonging actually felt in the context of the group itself. Our props for thinking through the theme of belonging were three books-to-film - Carson McCuller's "The Member of the Wedding," Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis" and Rebecca Wells' "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" - which we turned inside out (and back again!) over fireside discussions, salon screenings, wine and food, and walks in the woods. There was even a game of hopscotch thrown into the mix to return us to those tenuous belongings of girlhood, and remind us of how play could make us feel a part of the crowd, or apart from it. Bringing our own stories of belonging (or not) into dialogue with the kind of belongings (and longings) experienced by our fictional weekend companions enabled us, by Sunday, to put forth a tentative lexicon of what might constitute belonging: unconditional acceptance, confidence, respect, connection, freedom, love, leaving and returning, negotiation, action and being yourself being but a sampling of the words and sentiments that found their way into it. A special insight into belonging was provided by having a set of triplets with us for the weekend. As one of the sisters so eloquently encapsulated that sense of being always already a 'we' beyond the 'me': "I was belonged before I was born."

Thank you to everyone who was part of this special weekend for making it such a memorable learning and living experience.