The next day I attended the Resolution selection meeting at the AVDC Offices in Aylesbury. Why do the staff there see the WI coming and immediately conduct a fire evacuation drill? It cannot be three cases of coincidence, can it? It was an interesting meeting because the five short-listed resolutions stirred up quite a lot of discussion. It was a good idea to give everyone a tick sheet so that we could review each of the subjects against the same criteria. The WI Advisers took turns to present the resolutions and offered ideas on how the members should approach them in their own WIs. They also directed us to the wealth of material issued by NFWI which is on the national website ready to download. In fact, it is almost done for us all these days.
On Saturday 30th November three of our WI members attended the primary school’s Christmas Fair to help the children stuff and sew up their own knitted teddy bear. Some kind grandparent had knitted 50 teddy bears and donated them to the school. The WI was approached to see if we would help. It was quite entertaining but we were a bit surprised at how few children had ever sewn anything at all and hardly any knew how to knit. (I am afraid this applied to several of the parents too). I know, through WI Life that some WIs go into schools to teach basic skills so should we be offering to fill this gap? Surely there is space in the national curriculum for something of this kind: co-ordination, design and technology are all necessary in life.
In the evening the local WI held its Barn Dance. This had been planned for June but had to be postponed because of lack of support which was not a problem in November. People came from miles around. It was great fun: good refreshments, a grand band and although the caller struggled with dancers who had forgotten which was left and which was right everyone enjoyed themselves. I am sure it must have been a successful fund-raiser too.