December

Dear Reader,

 

A Happy Christmas to you and may you enjoy a successful New Year. It is going to be a very busy 2015 for WI members wherever they live and let us look forward to another 100 years of the WI.

 

17th December

This evening two members went into Bletchley for the Bletchley Belles concert. This group was formed originally from WI members but now it includes non-members too. The choir raises money for Willen Hospice and has reached £10,000 over the years . Tonight it was also collecting funds for the Christmas scheme run by the Milton Keynes churches to provide food and shelter over the holiday to the homeless. The hall looked lovely, the singing was good  and the young soloist from the Bedford Modern School played the cello and the piano beautifully. The audience has to sing as well and there is always a fun pantomime on offer. A lovely beginning to Christmas.

 

10th December

The discussion group from the local WI met this evening in a member's home. It was a full house and the talk and the wine flowed.The subject under discussion was "Advertising" and it proved a good choice. Some of those present had worked in advertising which was a useful addition to the topic. The majority get exceedingly fed up with the repeated adverts on television, so much so that they don't watch the programmes as they are first aired but record them. Then they can watch without the constant interruptions for commercial breaks. If I was paying to advertise in this manner, this practice would give me pause. Some of us cannot understand the adverts anyway and become exceedingly cross when two thirds of the daily newspapers are taken up with full page coloured advertisements. We are told this keeps the cost of the papers down but surely it is becoming counter-productive. Is it money which changes promotion into advertising? Not many of us could remember actually going out to buy an item advertised on the television. And as for those cold calls on the telephone and e-mails...............well, many waxed lyrical on what they thought of those! So we swapped shut-off techniques and ways in which technical advances could be used to block the calls altogether.There were some adverts--- mostly from the past--- which were remembered with affection and some slogans that will never be forgotten but at present we didn't think there were any that would stand the test of time.

 

8th December

Another pre-Christmas celebration saw 44 local WI members out for dinner at a village inn not many miles away.This means that we can hire the community bus and partake of a second glass of wine without fear from a policeman with a breathalizer at the end of the lane. We enjoyed a wonderful meal, lots of talk and shared memories of the past year. I look forward to seeing everyone dressed up in her sparkling finery and in festive mood.How better to celebrate a successful year than to meet socially and informally like this?

 

6th December

Along with other organisations in the town, the WI was asked to provide and decorate a Christmas tree for the Parish Church. Each display had to be based on a carol so we had chosen "In the Bleak Midwinter" which we thought would be nice and simple. Two years ago we decorated a real tree which sat above a radiator throughout the 12 days of Christmas and when returned was not expected to live. However it is now growing strongly in its new home in the North, safely avoiding being dug up again to stand in the church this year. We bought a little pretend tree from a big store nearby which sufficed and looked very pretty covered in icicles, snow and bright red hearts.