Making oneself heard

15 October
Another busy day for the local WI because the craft group met in the afternoon and then our WI was the hostess for the Group meeting. The craft people held their final cross-stitch session before changing to crochet for a few weeks. There are quite a few ambitious tapestry projects started and we have gained a lot from our own member's excellent tuition.
The speaker at the Group meeting was Malcolm Singer who has enjoyed a long career with the BBC and still presents programmes for local radio.Luckily, in today's climate, he had few associations with television. He reminded us of the good old days when the classic comedy radio shows were going out on the air in the fifties and sixties and told us about the difficulties encountered with outside broadcasts of concerts from places like the Stables at Wavendon before its conversion to a state-of-the-arts theatre.We also enjoyed a good moan about the shutting down of much local radio and the growth of these pointless phone-in programmes.The reports from the other WIs were very interesting and it was noticeable how busy everyone had been in the village communities, doing their bit for the Queen's Jubilee and the Olympics.

10 October
Today the Bucks Federation arranged an Autumn event in High Wycombe Town Hall at which Lynda Bellingham was the guest speaker. It was a sell-out because Lynda is a local girl and she has appeared in the Calendar Girls productions.She is a very gifted public speaker, never refering to notes and perfectly at ease with questions which led her into interesting digressions. I wonder whether anyone thought to tell her that at least one of the teachers she mentioned from the Aylesbury High School could have been in the audience, as she used to be a very active WI member.Lynda talked about adoption and the attitude towards young girls in the theatre in her early years when verbal and physical abuse were thought of as an easy source of laughs. She probably did more for members' awareness of the WI campaign against Violence against Women than any article in WI Life. Lynda's autobiography was selling like hot cakes afterwards and I do recommend that you read it, if you or any member of your family was about Aylesbury while she was growing up in Aston Abbots.
In the evening the local WI Discussion Group met to talk about the set theme of Driving.Love it or hate it we all have to do quite a bit of driving in our everyday lives.So we heard of experiences on driving tests,road accidents, the idiosyncrases of Sat-Nav, comparisons with practices abroad: the state of the roads also came up for comment.We discussed schemes to cut down on traffic but no one could come up with a way of crossing through Aylesbury in less than 35 minutes.

3 October
I don't know how I missed writing about our local WI's meeting when we were entertained by a lovely young lady demonstrating hula-hoop dance. She was wonderfully supple and a living example of the benefits of this type of exercise.Hula-hoop dancing is a cross between gymnastics and the dance of the seven veils! It wasn't long before people were getting up and having a go with the hoops that Janine Haynes  had brought to the hall.Apparently a few minutes a day of exercising with a hoop is relaxing and burns off the calories so perhaps we should take it up in earnest.Members were also encouraged to nominate others to the committee and consider standing themselves. Our entry for the Big Walk, Little Splash competition has gone up for judging in the Bucks Federation so we are waiting to hear whether it has been successful and chosen to progress into the NFWI competition.