Category: Loneliness

Looking on

7/2/2018

Today I am wearing purple not just because I am already old and want to learn to spit but in memory of the fight which the Suffragettes waged to obtain the vote 100 years ago. How brave they were, not only physically but mentally as well! It takes a lot of courage to take up a banner and march in demonstrations even in the present time, when women are more visible in the public eye and much more confident in expressing their views. I was interested to hear at a talk given by Simon Heffer that the reason the women were granted the vote after the age of 30 was not because they were considered not to be mature enough to vote until they were 9 years older than males but because the government of the day wanted them at home to replace the loss of about two generations of the population in the Great War: don’t let the women have the opportunity of further education and a place in industry and the professions but keep them at home producing children.
Three generations of women have escaped having to fight for the right to vote so they are beholden to use it whenever the need arises. The WI is always in the forefront of sensible campaigns on behalf of the family and women’s welfare and are no longer bound by strict conventions on what is acceptable to be discussed in order to gain results. This week there is a question in Parliament about the practice of surgical mesh implants (Sling the Mesh) so why do some people think we cannot discuss FGM?
Every year once the short list for resolutions is released, it surprises me how many articles appear either in the national press or on the media on these very topics. This can be a good thing or not---are these ideas going to be old hat before the WI comes to discuss them in June or are they useful preparatory work as a build-up? Last year’s mandates are doing well. Lots of articles about plastic litter and measures to combat loneliness. The latter crosses over into the 2018 homelessness and modern slavery issues. The problems of self-image and the media and the selfie culture which is on the short list is appearing more often and also open talk about mental illness.
The sort of press interest we don’t need is people carping about the cost of the annual subscription and suggesting that the WI is closing branches. Is £41 for 11 meetings and for having the backup of a national organisation to look after our interests expensive? We are attracting younger members nationally although not locally. If we want younger members we really need evening WIs and operate where there are a lot of young women living and working. Reading the WI Life it seems to be the thirty year olds who are coming in perhaps to learn crafts but more likely to combat loneliness beyond work. Can we attract the older lonely too to get a good mix, since the sheltered accommodation these days is being built in the larger towns?
Our WI craft group has met twice since Christmas. We are turning our attention to making soft toy animals for the Annual Council Meeting competition. (This ties in with the resolutions about domestic abuse as the toys are to be given to women’s refuges). The book group has been reading The Girl on the Train which led to a lot of discussion about mental and physical abuse in the home. Because of a break over Christmas we had also read The Essex Serpent which was set in late Victorian times when women were beginning to question whether they had to obey convention and stay in the home rather than be educated and take an informed interest in the emergence of science and medicine.
So I’m back where I came in. We must not let the Suffragettes down by taking for granted all that they have won for us and remember that the early WI members were actively lending their support to their struggles. We can and should use their legacy to keep improving the lot of our families and others who find themselves suffering from injustice wherever they are.

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Food for thought

18/1/2018

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There is one thing I can promise you in 2018: you will not find any recipes nor pictures of food on my blog. What did journalists and people on the media write about before they discovered food? On every page of newspapers these days there is something about baking or cooking or dieting. If it is not directly taking up columns, then it is in the adverts. I cannot be the only person bored to tears by the subject. However, I reserve the right to let you find references to food waste because that is something which I feel strongly about and which the WI wants to work towards reducing.
So that is one New Year’s resolution. The next is to try to eliminate as much plastic from my life as possible. I will continue to take paper bags with me when I shop for food and read the labels on any new purchase to see what it contains and where it came from. This slows the whole shopping process down but is quite interesting to do. I wonder whether the WI campaign, along with David Attenborough may really make a difference. Surely all plastic should display advice on whether it can be re-cycled or not. Couldn’t all plastic be collected in one bin and be similarly dealt with at a plant in every authority? It is so confusing at present with no common treatment available.
If we are going to try to live by WI mandates we can all look out for our neighbours to combat loneliness and problems of depression which this often exacerbates. Homelessness is another problem that a WI member can try to alleviate by supporting her local women’s refuges and looking out for solutions. What a difference it would make if every town council took upon itself to house one homeless family! All communities have houses standing empty for months, sometimes years on end. Locally, we have an unused school building which has a roof, electricity and water which could be a refuge---albeit temporary until it is knocked down for re-development.
The local WI meeting last week touched on some of these topics when running through the shortlist of possible resolutions to go up for discussion at Cardiff at the NFWI Annual General Meeting in June. At this stage it is an individual choice from five topics but later we will vote as a WI either for or against the resolutions chosen to go forward. We listened to a very interesting talk on food nutrition when I think we all learned something new and useful about the food that we eat and what our bodies need and do with it. A high proportion of our members are planning to become dual members with the morning WI. Our interest groups continue to flourish.
The discussion group which meets monthly in a member’s house is one of the most successful of these. It is now four years old and has not run out of topics yet nor had anyone so offended as to walk out. Last night we were discussing body image in line with one of the shortlist resolutions. This again is a field where social media and advertising have a lot to answer for. It is not a new problem as everyone has always worried about how other people view us but now through social media one is on trial by a vast audience which is made up of spiteful people cloaked by anonymity. It is no longer one’s peer group in class nor one’s own family nor villagers on the street; it is the whole country telling everyone else where one’s face or body falls short of perfection. Little wonder the victim refuses to go out, go to school or walk back into the workplace.

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Challenges

26/6/2017

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21st June
Was there ever such a hot day for a WI outing as today? Winslow WI was celebrating its annual group excursion and had chosen to visit Windsor where fortunately it had booked a cruise up the river lasting for most of the afternoon. This was a little cooler than on the riverbank and was very enjoyable and ---guess what?--- I saw a kingfisher for the first time in my life. There was a lot of bird life to be seen and the commentator on the launch was very knowledgeable. The coach driver went a long way round to avoid the usual traffic jams in Aylesbury but the passengers didn’t mind how we reached home provided we could be reasonably cool. The members were grateful for the work of the committee in arranging the day.
19th June
Happy Stitchers were suffering from the heat so attendance was down but a few stalwarts managed a few stitches and quite a bit of chat.
7th June
The National Federation’s Annual General Meeting in Liverpool and I was halfway up a mountain in The Lakes but I was willing the Ashley Green WI resolution to go well. Without one of these ultra-modern gadgets I had to wait to be told by text what the outcome had been. What a vote! Now we will need to lead the way in getting things done about the pollution caused by plastic fibres in the ocean and also, from the home front, to tackle loneliness in the community.
I am looking forward to hearing all about the meeting and reading about it in WI Life. I don’t think I have ever written in my blog so little about this the most important day in the WI calendar so I am hoping someone else will cover it on the Bucks website.
30th May
The book discussed by the local WI Book Group this month was not a novel but the autobiographical account of Joe Simpson’s survival story “Touching the Void”. We all learned a lot of new words to do with ice and mountains and knots used in climbing but what most impressed us was the sheer courage and determination demonstrated by both the mountaineers in extreme conditions. The decisions they both had to make with as much detachment as they could muster facing the almost certain outcome of death were mind-blowing. They were up against frostbite and broken limbs in blizzard conditions but never once did they blame anyone but themselves although both began to think of the mountain as a malevolent force against which they were fighting. We admired the book and the endeavour but still Joe Simpson couldn’t really explain why people like him have to challenge themselves to climb up these peaks and put themselves in such peril.

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Annual Council Meeting

8/5/2017

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4th May
Somehow or other the Bucks Annual Council Meeting seems to occur on a momentous day such as that of Maggie Thatcher’s funeral or when Prince Philip announces his retirement---events which impact on our main speakers. The morning agenda dealt with the business side of the Federation, announcements of forthcoming events and a preview of the Bucks resolution going up for discussion at the NFWI Annual General Meeting in Liverpool in June. There was also a presentation from Johnny Walker of Taylors Bulbs who told us how great a contribution the members’ orders bring to the finances of the BFWI and he managed to be amusing as well. Mr Walker certainly knows his audience. This was followed by a thought-provoking talk from Lindsay Boswell, Chief Executive of FareShare whose work is very relevant to the NFWI’s concern about food waste. It was also timely for the campaign which should hit the headlines at the end of this month. Lyndsay thinks big with 5 warehouses already working full time in London. He is planning others in major cities across the country. The ridiculous reasons given for stores and factories to throw out food border on being criminal. This is a sphere in which the WI members can make a difference by challenging the perpetrators.
In the afternoon, Judge Francis Sheridan gave the WI members an update on his campaign to assist the NFWI in keeping people with mental disabilities out of jail for criminal offences and for injecting more speed and compassion into the family courts, especially in relation to children and domestic abuse. We have a strong ally on the county circuit. Then it was Giles Brandreth to talk about the seven sources of happiness. Actually, the audience didn’t know that was his chosen topic until almost the end of his very entertaining talk. He has become something of an authority on the Duke of Edinburgh so it was natural that he talked about the Prince’s life following the day’s announcement. Giles was very amusing and involved the BOT members in his presentation: I thought our Vice-Chair Pat Poole and Tracy Girdler-Rogers did very well in what at times became an unrehearsed double act. At the end, he did define happiness as being a leaf on a living and growing tree which tied in neatly with the WI member’s part in the WI and in the community.
3rd may
Tonight, the local WI held its Resolution meeting. Both subjects were covered by members using the presentations available on the NFWI website. This means that the facts and figures can be seen on the screen and are not difficult to take in from someone talking and reading at the same time. It will be interesting to hear what the members thought of this method. We instructed our delegate from a neighbouring WI to vote in favour of both resolutions but we only gave her discretion on the Loneliness vote, not the Plastic Soup. A longstanding member then talked about her experiences over the years as a member of Winslow WI from the age of fourteen. All the scrapbooks were on display and it was interesting and rather sad to see the shift away from drama and music which has taken place in our WI and indeed right across the WI movement.
25th April
The local WI book group met this afternoon to talk over “The Shadow of the Wind” by Zafon. This thriller set in Spain around the civil war was popular with the readers, much more so than the previous title, Salmon Rushdie’s “Midnight Children”. There was a bit too much blood and gore in the Zafon for me but I was definitely in the minority: the author covered nearly every means of a violent death in some detail. The others enjoyed the almost Dickensian melodrama and the descriptions of terrible poverty and hardship. There was humour too and the descriptions of the squalor were good. There was certainly plenty of action and frequent flashbacks covered by letters and interviews with those just hanging on to life long enough to tell their story. We are off to Peru with the next title for a bit of mountain-climbing.
24th April
The Happy Stitchers are busy knitting, crocheting, making patchwork and generally wielding their needles---the only needles we are not prepared to accept are those used for tattoos. We also looked at what the members had made at the rag rug session in Padbury and wondered whether we might travel down to Stuart Lodge one Tuesday to visit its craft shop and perhaps go to the next Craft Fair at the NEC.

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Reception and resolutions

30/11/2016

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25th November
The winter reception at the Judges’ Lodgings in Aylesbury tonight proved to be a very pleasant evening. The event was organised by the Bucks Federation Chairman, Jenny Street in aid of the Denman College Appeal. The guests were Barbara Russell the Mayor of Aylesbury, Val Letheren the Chairman of Bucks County Council and Judge Frances Sheridan. The refreshments had been prepared by Posh Nosh but were served by members of the BFWI Board of Trustees resplendent in frilly aprons made specially by Tracey, one of our ACWW representatives. Cantlos provided the musical entertainment, singing and playing on a selection of stringed instruments. Each of the guests gave a short speech and Judge Sheridan promised to take parties from those attending on tours of the chambers and the cells and throw in a bit of the history of the premises at the same time. The evening also provided the members with a chance to catch up with all the news of friends in other WIs across the county.
22nd November
We wondered whether we had made a mistake about the venue when we arrived at the AVDC Gatehouse this afternoon for the WI Resolutions Selection meeting. What were all these men in suits doing milling around “The Street”? We were soon directed to the Diamond Room where we were able to sit in comfort and listen to the team of WI Advisers who had volunteered to present the six resolutions to make the short list for June 2017.
The first subject was the one of loneliness not just for old people but at every age and of both genders. We rather thought that this was something the WI was aware of and could do something about locally without perhaps using up a mandate on it. The next resolution asked the Government to make everyone more aware of and to take action against the practice of Female Genital Mutilation(FGM) which although illegal in the UK is still happening here and girls are being taken abroad for the operation. There have been no prosecutions. Why? Is the WI able to act on this issue under its “Violence against Women” mandate without another mandate?
Equal access for all who need specialised maternal mental health services was a worthy cause because it is a huge problem which suffers in the postcode lottery when different authorities have different standards of provision. Would it be enough for WI members to find out what is available locally and then challenge the status quo near them? Another worthy cause is the support of women’s refuges but again many WIs are already active on this front preparing boxes of items for homeless women and children. How can the WIs and NFWI increase the awareness of the plight of refugees in camps where women and children are at greater risk from abuse and have no safe place to sleep and eat? It is difficult enough to actually set up camps where they are so desperately needed let alone provide safe areas within them. We are all too aware of these international problems from the media coverage and are keen to contribute towards the organised charities that deal with them. Is that enough or am I being practical but heartless?
The final resolution on plastic soup is rumoured to have come from Bucks following the attempt last year to include the banning of plastic beads in cosmetics on the list for the 2016 AGM. Plastic beads are being removed from products now but here the Government is being asked to fund research and develop solutions to the pollution of the oceans by tiny microplastic fibres being shed from washed synthetics. Similar damage to what can be done by the beads can follow fibres entering the food chain. It will be expensive to combat this contamination but it is a growing time bomb for future generations.
These meetings are always interesting and helpful before WI members make their selection.

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