MFWI News

Our WI meeting held on Thursday 2^nd December at the GAA Club, McGovern Park, was our Christmas meeting. Many members wore Christmas jumpers and hats making the evening feel festive.

Dorothy and Lorraine provided various Christmas craft items, many of them recycled, for us to make a Christmas tree ornament and with advice and a demonstration to give us ideas we enjoyed making our own, while we chatted and had tea organised by Linda. Cheese, biscuits, chocolates, and mince pies were enjoyed by all.

Lesley made and donated a delicious Christmas cake for us to guess the weight – won by Hazel. A book swop was also available.

The second part of our evening organised by Lorna was a presentation from Helen Astrid, who runs a singing academy in Twickenham, on the history of Christmas carols. Carols date back to the 2^nd century AD, and many of our favourite carols were mentioned together with their history.

Singing carols became popular in the Victorian times. Christmas carols, as opposed to Christmas songs, usually have a religious basis. Each of the items mentioned in the 12 days of Christmas was a metaphor for a bible story, the tree being God’s true love and the partridge, Jesus.

Helen had hoped to join us in person but still managed to join us on Zoom while we sung carols, Once in Royal David’s City, Silent Night, and Hark! The Herald Angels Sing: a lovely start to the Christmas Season. We finished the evening with member-donated gifts for a raffle.

Many thanks to Lorna who organised our Christmas meal at the Ascott in Eastcote where we had a very good meal and very pleasant evening with friends; it was so nice to be able to have a little normality in these difficult times.

REWI wishes everyone a happy & healthy 2022.

Father Christmas once again heard about our Christmas party and came along to hand out the Secret Santa gifts. We enjoyed sharing the food on our buffet table and had time for a good old chat before heading home.

Our Christmas meal was organised by Chris. Thankfully Covid was kind and we went to the St. Giles Hotel in Feltham and enjoyed their Christmas set menu.

Our first meeting of the year was an enjoyable and informative talk by Russell Bowes, a garden historian, entitled Say it with Poison in which he described, very theatrically, many plants which we may have in our gardens which can be used for dubious purposes.

Laleham WI had a great turnout for their first meeting of 2022. Members enjoyed catching up with each other over tea and biscuits and President, Helen Hurst brought everyone up to speed on news and events to come.

Membership also voted on the WI 2022 Resolutions.

The highlight of the evening was delivered by member June Barnard, who gave a lively and entertaining talk about her long experience as an event and trip organiser.

We enjoyed some amusing stories as well as learning a lot about what goes into making successful trips. Don’t know how you do it June… but please don’t stop!

Here’s Judy McFarlane presiding over her Raffle prizes for the evening.

After a warm welcome from the new President, members attending December’s meeting were given a Christmas table quiz, on Christmas carols.

Homemade mince pies were amongst the treats to have with our wine and fruit juice. A table was adorned with a selection of handmade items skilfully made by the craft group. Santa socks, Christmas puds, angels, tree decorations and an assortment of various gifts and tags. We then played a round of Handbag Bingo, which bought lots of laughter as everyone emptied their handbags.

On leaving, all members were given a Christmas goody bag from our President and we wished a Merry Christmas to one and all.

January’s meeting was in a different hall as the one we normally use is undergoing refurbishment.

A minute’s silence was held in memory of our dear member Bobby Loveday, who passed away on 3 January 2022 aged 102: lovely lady who will be sorely missed.

Our speaker was Sandra Ebbetts from The House of Colour. She spoke about being adventurous with colours, styles and accessories. Having your skin tone analysed opens up a whole new world of style and colour. Sandra was friendly and her presentation was good. Members were impressed. Tea and coffee followed and there was lots of chatter as the raffle was drawn. A good start to the new year!

Upcycling and recycling was the theme of our December meeting as we enjoyed making Christmas decorations, gift bags and cards with excellent guidance from Leila Khasal (pictured).

Here’s a selection of those made in person at Mind (our venue) and also by those following from home via Zoom. It was our first time trying to livestream a craft activity rather than a talk.

We were so happy to be back with our cake stall at the Crouch End Christmas Fair—our thanks to organiser Patsy for the opportunity.

Wonderful to see everyone who stopped by and hopefully there will be other opportunities this year, so do look out for us! Grateful thanks to all our members for their time and efforts spent organising, baking and helping on the day.

We enjoyed the company of Wildlife Photographer, Tom Way for a second visit.

He is based in Buckinghamshire and travels the world in search of perfect wildlife photographs which involves days and sometimes weeks of patience waiting for that ‘perfect shot’.
This may involve lurking in tall grass for hares, sitting in the river looking for voles or hiding up trees but the results are fantastic.

His last talk was mainly his exploits in Africa in search of big game with amazing close ups of lions, leopards, elephants and gorillas but this time he concentrated on UK wildlife with shots of red deer in Scotland and a plethora of wonderful bird close ups, including puffins, owls and birds of prey.

He also sells cards of his photos and amidst the oohs and ayahs from the audience at his cute array of animals, he was certainly a resounding success.

Memories of 2021…

On 5 July we were lucky enough to have our planned garden party in tribute to the NHS 73rd Birthday.

A fine buffet of sandwiches and home made cakes graced our table at the Outdoor Centre and a safe and sociable environment for our members was enjoyed. Our main NHS cake was kindly made by a member’s daughter.

Most of us had come through the last 18 months unscathed and hopes were high for a return to many more WI occasions. We hope all is well with other WIs and look forward to seeing the rest of our members soon.