Playing at home

26th February
It has been a week of stay at home local WI events. Tonight 16 of our members met in one of the local pubs to re-discover card games. This was the third get-together of the Games Group. We played Newmarket and a game new to me called May I? a version of rummy.It was a most enjoyable evening and another opportunity to get to know people a little better outside the monthly meeting. Some of those attending were also escaping from TV football.

21st February
There was a good turn-out from the Craft Group members today at a member's house. We met for coffee and brought lunch so that we could get down to producing items for our summer commitments at shows and garden parties.One room housed the machinists and another the knitters and sewers and a great deal of progress was made on the various projects in hand.It is pleasant to work together like this and there is always someone available to offer advice or help with problems.

19th February
Two of us from the local WI have started to plan the programme for 2014. We have received some suggestions from the members and we consulted recent Bucks Newsletters for ideas outside the Speakers List produced by the Speakers and Publications Federation Sub-committee.We will also be attending the Presentation Evening which this committee hosts early in every year.Like all WIs we try to obtain speakers near to home for the winter months but beyond those we are looking for a broad range of topics. Ours is a large membership so we can afford quite expensive speakers so should be able to avoid too many charitable organisations or commercial ones.Smaller WIs with fewer funds at their disposal benefit from free demonstrations. The programme can make or break a WI so it is very important to attract not only new members but to retain the faithful.We are thinking about one home-spun group effort and also an open meeting with a title attractive to family and friends.It does seem very early to be thinking about 2014 but speakers get booked up well in advance and the committee likes to have it ready to add the competitions and then go to print by October at the latest. If we start now we have time to shuffle dates to suit the speakers.