Happy Christmas

HAPPY CHRISTMAS, DEAR READER AND A SUCCESSFUL NEW YEAR
12th December
This will possibly be the last entry on my blog for 2016. At this time of year, I always wonder whether it is worth going on with this WI diary. With advancing years, I shall be attending fewer events and there may be another Bucks member out there who is more active than I am who would like to take over. Discuss.
Our Christmas craft group meeting took the form of a lovely tea party where the talk was of things achieved in 2016 and vague ideas of changes that the next year will bring. Some of us are planning to drop down to Stuart Lodge one Tuesday to visit the craft shop even though we ourselves could probably compete from the stuff we have about our houses.
7th December
The local WI was treated to communal singing of carols and popular songs led by Paul French. As usual the refreshments were many and varied and hugely fattening. In the business part of the meeting the members approved the financial statement held over from the annual meeting in November. Reports were given of the outing to Winchester and the walk for Climate Change. Names were taken for events coming up in the next two months and members were asked to be sure to fill in their personal choice from the short list of resolutions for the NFWI annual general meeting in June at Liverpool. Unfortunately, it is not our WI’s turn to send a delegate this time.
5th December
Progress is being made by the members who are learning to crochet. Everyone is at a different stage but three projects are underweigh and three people are still practising the basic stitches before starting on something real. It takes time to stop trying to knit with a crochet hook rather than use a single tool.
29th November
What a delight it was to find that all the members of the Reading Group had enjoyed “Road Ends” by Mary Lawson and that we were only one short of a full house for the meeting. We had read two other novels by this author over the years. They are family stories set in the swinging sixties in London and the same decade in a very cold rural community in Canada. All the characters are beautifully developed and the tensions within the families and within themselves ( whether they are old men, stressed out mothers or 4 year old children) are completely understandable. Everything hangs together so that one cannot see exactly what single event caused and set in motion the happenings of the story because it is all so interwoven. It concludes on a positive note although some of the characters have had to modify their ideas of how they planned to lead their lives.
 
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