May 2002 Meeting - Oh! What A Night!

Nearly seventy members, guests, past members, past presidents and past committee members packed The Red Lion at Clanville on Tuesday 7 May to celebrate Andover Women in Business Club's 10th Anniversary.

A real party mood filled the air, with laughter, smiles and the noisy chatter of people meeting up with others they had not seen for years. The atmosphere was electric and the room was full of balloons and reminders of past events and memories taken from ten years of archive Newsletters. The Club's display board was newly adorned with many long lost photographs of events gone by and albums, recalling stories of years past, immortalised in newsprint, creating enormous interest, with guests studying them, like bees around a honey pot.

The car park crammed with cars, the meal was served, a splendid buffet of hot and imaginative dishes to suit every palette. Many went back for more, and even more went back for the wonderful selection of desserts!

The formal side of festivities began after coffee, with a celebration cake and a toast to the Club's continued success. Presentations of chocolates and AWIBC pens and business card holders were made to all past presidents in the room, some of whom had travelled considerable distances to join in the celebrations. Brenda Locke, the Club's current President, presented 11 founder members, who had remained with the Club for ten years, with certificates to mark the occasion.

Brenda read out messages of best wishes from absent members, including a letter from Yvonne Povah, founder of the Club and whose brainchild the Club was, and a card from Vera Hughes, one of two founder members with 10 years membership, who were regrettably unable to be at the meeting.

The unenviable task left to the Speaker for the evening, Ann Shaw, News Editor of the Andover Advertiser, was firstly to get the audience's attention! Having achieved this, Ann started her talk by congratulating the Club on its success, acknowledging that many groups struggle to survive, and rarely continue to grow and prosper as Andover Women in Business Club has.

Ann had wise and inspiring words about the Club's future role in the local business community, calling upon its members to make their opinions about local commercial issues more widely known. She acknowledged the powerful and strong membership that the Club now has and encouraged its members to make themselves better heard.

Ann's recollections about her own career, from Cub Reporter through to News Editor were enlightening and highly amusing. Likening herself to a virtual dinosaur, she saw parallels with her mother's memories of watching the Wright Brothers and her memories of early times as a journalist! Few of the members could have imagined the basic equipment and facilities available in her early days in a newspaper office - the use simply of a manual typewriter and only buses as transport to get to assignments. "The only time we ever had transport was a Wednesday afternoon" she recalled. "A local shop, Pond's, allowed us to use their van as it was early closing on Wednesdays, so it was great if a story broke then."

As to following a career in journalism, Ann attributes her desire to be a journalist to her grandfather, who ran a newspaper. Aged 18, Ann succeeded in getting an interview with the Andover Advertiser and, as the first female member of staff, joined the paper with Cyril Berry, the paper's Editor at the time.

"My first role was to 'hold copy' - reading and checking absolutely everything, from stories to raffle tickets!" she commented. "I was so excited at getting my first reporting job - a Jumble Sale in Junction Road. I felt so important when I arrived!"

But Ann acknowledges that reporting is very different now, with computers and technology, there is less need to be out of the office. Things have moved on considerably from her early days when all newspapers were broadsheets and were set on hot metal Linotype machines. She recalled how different it is now, waiting for the finished newspaper to come off the press. "Now we send a digital copy to Weymouth on a Thursday afternoon and don't see it until next morning. A far cry from when we would wait impatiently to see the first copies come off the press, printed on the premises, and then rush off down to The George to celebrate!" Ann reminisced.

Following a move to the Portsmouth Evening News, where Ann found the pressure of a daily newspaper very different, she married and eventually returned to Andover and rejoined the Andover Advertiser as a reporter. To the obvious amusement of the guests at the meeting, Ann recounted the story of her rather short career ath Portsmouth, when, sent to report on a local ballet concert, she slipped off early and did not remain long enough to witness the chief ballerina fall off the stage!

Several years later, after move to secretarial work and the arrival of children, Ann returned to journalism and, despite her previous mishap, succeeded in persuading Derek Tempro, the chief Reporter at the Andover Advertiser of the time, to take her back as a sub-editor.

Now, many years on, Ann Shaw is News Editor at the paper and despite the changes, she still believes that newspapers themselves still have a romance of their own. "The world of journalism is still an exciting one and there is still always a story around every corner. Newspapers need to build up good relationships with the people around them" she commented. "Sometimes people try to manipulate the news but to be a good journalist you need independence of mind and have to make people understand the that newspaper must makes its point."

Concluding her fascinating insight into different type of business world, Ann told the Club's members that her most satisfying role is still to make otherwise boring or tedious stories more readable for people. "That's when you know you have achieved something" Ann finished.

A raffle held at the party raised £170 towards computer equipment that AWIBC is hoping to provide for Andover Mencap.

As part of Andover Women in Business Club's 10th Anniversary celebrations, there was a display in the Andover Library window for a week from 11 May.