Showing off

21st August
Every year BFWI invites every member who serves on any sub-committee or who holds a special responsibility within the organisation to join them for supper somewhere in the County. I hasten to add that we all have to pay for the privilege: there is no such thing as a free supper either! Even so it is a nice gesture and we appreciate it. It is about the only occasion when we all get together and can talk over our plans and ideas for the coming year. This year we met at Naphill and the local WI did the catering. Excellent, of course.One of the best things about the evening was that no one rushed us and we were able to do a lot of talking or should I call it networking these days?
22nd August
The local newspaper has done us proud with the article about the WI's opposition to the closure of the Post Offices in our area. I hope that lots of people will write this week to the Consultation Team and express their concerns. The trouble is that if we save one, another will be for the chop as the Post Office maintains it has to fulfil its quota.
25th August
Thank Goodness it stopped raining even if there was no obvious sunshine for the Winslow Show. It was great to see the animals back in the show-ring after last year's ban because of foot and mouth disease restrictions. We had lots of visitors to our stand which had a new location this year, right next to the pig roast so we were sure of people dropping in to look at our exhibit. We majored on the Big Tidy Up campaign which NFWI will launch in September. Winslow WI is hoping to do a litter pick around the town sometime in October so we were asking people where they thought the trouble spots were to be found. We are going to invite other organisations in the town to join us. Our knitted house exhibit was popular with the children, as was the little free quiz which was organised for them. I hope we attract some new members but it was nice talking to our own members and visitors from around the country. These events are a lot of work but well worth the effort.At the end of the day everything was packed off to go to the County Show at Aylesbury where I am pleased to see we have a couple of tables for promotion in the Shopping Tent.
30th August
Front page spread in the Daily Telegraph about the "sexiest WI in Britain"! All publicity is good publicity except one's obituary they say and personally I don't think this will do the WI any harm. The matter that I question is talk of re-writing the rules. There is nothing in the rules to stop WI members making nude calendars or learning pole-dancing but a group is not a WI unless it obeys the constitution. WI Lite is a WI drawing up its own programme and providing what its members want which is exactly what every WI should do. One of the things people who enquire about joining the WI are always told is to look around, visit lots of WIs and see which suits you. It is a shame the members of Bramley WI complained about the new one but it is ever so irritating if a new WI is formed in one's locality and one sees it as a threat: there is room for both.
We may not want to have speakers and demonstrators who will teach us how to appear beautiful and sexy enough to appear in glossy magazines.We have all had our moments! Quite frankly there are a lot of younger people who don't want that either. They are turning their attention to learning traditional crafts and skills which recent education has missed out.We are learning from them the modern technology for communications--each generation benefitting from the other and appreciating what the other can provide. It was ever so and the WI programme should cater for the membership. The first WI members fought for emancipation and the education of women and without their efforts and dedication WI Lite would never have been able to strut their stuff anywhere accept in the privacy of their own homes.
The WI is alive and well but its members reveal it in different ways!
There must be something in the water in Hampshire these days.