Towards Christmas

​What a week as we all hurtle towards Christmas! The local WI Book Group met to discuss “Beach House” by Jane Green. We were forewarned that this novel was classified as Chicklit and written by the Queen of Chicklit. This genre introduces lots of characters suffering from or surrounded by others suffering from all the social relationship problems that one reads about in agony aunt letters. These people live in houses which are described inside and out in great detail and they are dressed in fully documented clothes. Then all the characters are brought together either under one roof or in a small part of some community and manage to sort themselves out. Actually, that is a bit unkind because the novel was well written and we all enjoyed reading a light holiday type of book for a change. Our next “set” book will teach us not to be so snobby because it is a huge historical novel which promises to take at least two months to finish!
The next day I attended the Resolution selection meeting at the AVDC Offices in Aylesbury. Why do the staff there see the WI coming and immediately conduct a fire evacuation drill? It cannot be three cases of coincidence, can it? It was an interesting meeting because the five short-listed resolutions stirred up quite a lot of discussion. It was a good idea to give everyone a tick sheet so that we could review each of the subjects against the same criteria. The WI Advisers took turns to present the resolutions and offered ideas on how the members should approach them in their own WIs. They also directed us to the wealth of material issued by NFWI which is on the national website ready to download. In fact, it is almost done for us all these days.
On Saturday 30th November three of our WI members attended the primary school’s Christmas Fair to help the children stuff and sew up their own knitted teddy bear. Some kind grandparent had knitted 50 teddy bears and donated them to the school. The WI was approached to see if we would help. It was quite entertaining but we were a bit surprised at how few children had ever sewn anything at all and hardly any knew how to knit. (I am afraid this applied to several of the parents too). I know, through WI Life that some WIs go into schools to teach basic skills so should we be offering to fill this gap? Surely there is space in the national curriculum for something of this kind: co-ordination, design and technology are all necessary in life.
In the evening the local WI held its Barn Dance. This had been planned for June but had to be postponed because of lack of support which was not a problem in November. People came from miles around. It was great fun: good refreshments, a grand band and although the caller struggled with dancers who had forgotten which was left and which was right everyone enjoyed themselves. I am sure it must have been a successful fund-raiser too.