Talk amongst ourselves

8th February
The local WI Discussion Group met this evening for the first time since December and we all enjoyed getting beyond our own four walls while the snow still lay around.We set out to discuss the short list of resolutions even though our votes had been already cast at the January WI meeting. Then, the two delegates had reported back from the Selection Meeting in Aylesbury but discussion amongst 45 people is not really easy and there was pressure for time.We were fairly evenly torn between the wish for more midwives and against the closure of environmental centres.Discussing all the topics led to talk about the system of choosing resolutions and the importance of WIs following up on those passed at the Annual General Meetings.After the "set" topics we ranged back over some of the resolutions from the past and once more thanked our lucky stars for living in the age in which we are and for having seen so much progress in science and technology, knowledge in general.

3rd February
As 2012 is a big anniversary for our local WI, not just the Jubilee and Charles Dickens, we spent this morning looking through our archives and thinking about what to display when we hold our birthday event in July. Material has been squirrelled away in variuous houses across the years so we now have a list of where everything is.We need a new scrapbook for the last couple of years of photos and press cuttings. There is a danger, now that events are recorded electronically, that things might disappear from the obvious tangible records that are needed for exhibitions.What struck me was how old fashioned material looked which had been produced in our own lifetimes.Tempus fugit.

1st February
What a good meeting we enjoyed tonight. There had had to be a straight swap between speakers booked for the annual programme. About 45 members watched a butcher prepare a lamb carcass for the shop. Not one member keeled over because it was all so clinically cold. We learned about the problems besetting butchers today, a trade where there are few apprentices and many high street shops are disappearing. We touched on the butchery methods of people working in supermarkets and the damaging effect of animals travelling long distances to slaughterhouses---a subject which the WI tried to bring to more general notice through a resolution some years ago. Then the butcher handed out a quiz for members to do. I wonder how many unsuspecting males on the verge of sleep were suddenly asked "So what is the gestation period of a pig?" It is surprising the interests one develops via the WI.
Did you see the lady on Mastermind who had chosen the WI as her specialist subject? Poor woman, in the stress of the moment she forgot the name of our National Chair: she'll probably be excommunicated! Actually she did very well but didn't win the round. I wonder whether a Mastermind might go down well in Bucks. Members enjoy the quiz evenings but those are team events and not such a challenge as an individual trial.