Time for thought and fun

4th December
Our annual Christmas party meeting was a very noisy affair. We covered the business side of the evening fairly quickly: we heard who had been chosen for all the various posts next year and the good news that our exercise area was now open for use in the playing field. An intrepid band were planning to go en masse to try out their routines.Reports were given of the resolution selection meetings and of the Gloucester trip and the Group meeting. We then played competitive games where we made a table Christmas tree and this was followed by some mind-stretching number games. Of course there was the usual cheating but a good time was had by all. We even attracted a couple of new members for 2014. The refreshments were excellent and far too much but we never learn...
I think half the membership is now booked in for a Christmas dinner next week at a pub nearby where there will be even more food!
To show that we can share we have made donations of goods and food to the Women's Refuge and the local food banks. We also collected some money for the Air Ambulance instead of sending Christmas cards to each other.

26th November
The local WI Book Group met this afternoon. It was almost a full house and an almost unanimous opinion of the novel we had all been reading. It was perhaps a bit unfair that Jane Green's Beach House followed Bring Up the Bodies because it cannot be described as prize-winning fiction.The category is chicklit, I believe but it is classed as good chicklit, so to each her own! The trouble is that a novel like this gives us very little to actually discuss so we enjoy a nice long talk about other things over a cup of tea.

25th November
Today there was a day conference at Denman College which WI members could attend if they had applied for a ticket in time. The subject was the disposal of nuclear waste and whether the previous approach by the authorities to find a site had been the best way to tackle the question before they try again. Did you know that they had asked county and district councils to volunteer to have a facility built under their area for storing spent nuclear waste? The UK only needs one site (Scotland is doing its own thing apparently) and West Cumbria volunteered but the County Council veto-ed it although the district council considered the benefits offered would make it worthwhile.Any storage site will take ages to build and we were shown pictures of some in other countries. One can understand that people living near Sellafield where the most knowledgeable scientists are already based would volunteer.There are not all that many places where the geology is right for the building of such a huge cavern.It was all very interesting and the discussions were led by specialists and professors and the WI members had their say and gave advice on an approach. We agreed that there must be a huge educational campaign to inform the public, to do complete geological surveys of the country and encourage the universities to educate geologists as soon as possible because the site will not be operative in our lifetimes but will be absolutely necessary in the near future.

21st November
Today was cold, very cold but nothing daunted the Group Convenor took her 5 WIs on a trip to Gloucester to the Christmas Market at Gloucester Quays.It was lovely to visit all the stalls on the dockside. There was a good smell of cinnamon in the air, bakers and piemakers were busy and all the stallholders were dressed in Victorian costume. There were jugglers and carol singers and live music. After that, there were all the modern charms of factory outlets where bargains could be had from well known traders. Other members went off to visit the cathedral or the Maritime Museum---so plenty to do.I think everyone enjoyed themselves and the cold gave us all a wonderful excuse to partake of mulled wine, hot mincepies and other warming spirits!