Together...

​It seems to be the closed season for me as regards the WI because I haven’t added anything to the blog for 6 weeks. I shall start now with an item which was not run by the WI but which several local WI members attended. Another organisation had arranged a group visit to Greatmoor EfW centre (electricity from waste) based at Edgcott near Aylesbury. Here 345,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste from Bucks and other counties is converted into electricity---nothing is wasted. This is where the contents of our ordinary household bins end up. The size, cleanliness and the efficiency of the plant is impressive: every authority should have a similar facility but unfortunately not all are as switched on as Bucks. You may organise small group visits or attend an open day where you will receive a more superficial grasp of what is done. I do recommend this as it covers many aspects of WI mandates and there is a lot of misinformation about the process bandied about.
The local book group takes no notice of summer holidays so we met as usual and were rewarded by having read a book that everyone appreciated and kept us talking for much longer than usual. I can’t remember how we came by this novel but we can recommend it to you all to read. “Painter of Silence” is by Georgina Harding. It is set in Romania between 1939 and the late 1950s so is a pretty harrowing read about events that few of us had really known much about. The vehicle for the story is a deaf mute. You’ve got to read it to see how successful this is. The writing is excellent too.
We enjoyed our usual WI garden party in the usual downpour: it doesn’t matter whose garden or what day of the week it is, the rain can be guaranteed for the local WI‘s summer meeting. But then the BFWI archery session had to be re-scheduled for wind and fetes were washed out so what’s new for August in the UK?
In the national press there have been mentions of matters related to WI mandates such as the publicity about ignorance of young women about the necessity to undergo regular smear tests and the lack of opportunities for older women to continue being tested. This is thanks to Marina Wheeler, the estranged wife of Boris Johnson, revealing that she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. I wonder what would happen if we all walked into our doctors’ surgeries and demanded smear tests---there’s a suggestion for a group visit for you!
I also saw that the hospice in Leicestershire which had banned the local WIs from baking cakes has had to eat its words but we knew it would, didn’t we?