Annual Council Meeting

What a difference a bit of sunshine makes not only to the coloured clothes worn but also to the sunny smiles as the Bucks WI members poured into the Waterside Theatre today! Jenny Street opened proceedings with an up-date on the changed sub-committee structure, a new name for the Friendship Club and information on exciting plans to celebrate our County Federation’ centenary in 2020. We were all pleased to learn that BFWI was in good financial heart and making strategic arrangements to be able to afford to celebrate our centenary.
The High Sheriff, Professor Ruth Farwell described how she achieved the honour and high-lighted the inequality still present in the academic world. Bucks Resilience has a new name too as Stephen Irons encouraged the WI members to volunteer to be on hand to help in the Emergency Plan should there be any major disaster in the area. Another celebration this year is for Stoke Mandeville Paraplegic Games which was founded in 1948 by Sir Ludwig Guttmann. The speakers for WheelPower had just returned from the Gold coast in Australia where the disabled athletes had held their games in parallel with the main Olympics event.
Dr Natalie Welden from Portsmouth University then reported on the latest developments in the identification of the scale of the plastic soup problem. Natalie was the main speaker in Liverpool at the Annual General Meeting and she described her most recent work with langoustines fished out of the Clyde estuary. The morning session closed with Nick from Countryside Books exhorting all of the WIs in Bucks to contribute a passage about their own village or town to replace the Village Book produced way back in 1987. We all know how much has changed since then.
Then it was lunchtime and the members spilled out into the sunshine to sit about on the walls and seats around the theatre just like we do when we visit the Albert hall for AGMs. The speaker in the afternoon was a typical example of Northern Grit: no one crossed her path with impunity. Christine Walkden talked of her life and times as a gardener working from a front garden strip via grave-digging to Kew Gardens and becoming a TV gardening guru. Christine is convinced that tender loving care is just as important with people as it is with plants. She is a wonderful natural speaker and her talk was full of humour which really appealed to the audience.
The members were sorry to learn that Jenny was standing down after 4 years as our Federation Chairman and we wished her a well-earned rest. It was another successful Council Meeting to end on. Here’s to the next year as we race towards 2020.
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