It was a very long 518 days between meetings but we were delighted to get back into the Community Centre for our July meeting. We were thrilled to have 20 members attending our first night back and even more excited to meet some of our members for the first time in person as they joined during lockdown and we’ve only met them on Zoom before. As one of them put it ‘it’s like meeting people off the telly!’
We had planned to have a speaker from our chosen charity, St Mungo’s Ealing, to tell us about the work they do to support rough sleepers in our community but unfortunately our speaker was pinged by the Covid app. However, we luckily foresaw this possibility and had a back up of a game of People Bingo where members were given bingo cards and had to find someone who was born in another country or was wearing patterned socks or has been to Denman College. It was a lovely opportunity for members to chat and get to know each other.
We were taking it easy in our first meeting, skipping some of our usual activities until we get back into the swing of things. As such, we didn’t sing Jerusalem (although we watched a video of it being sung at the 2015 Annual Meeting) or have a raffle. We did however have cake and we were delighted that our members rose to the occasion with their cake contributions!