WOOKEY HOLE W.I. NOVEMBER REPORT

The Nov meeting was well attended and best wishes were sent to one of our members who had broken her arm.     

Five of us had attended the recent SCFWI Annual Meeting and our delegate Sue H updated our members.It was an informative day with some excellent speakers including Jenny Bond.

Once again our W.I. are displaying a memorial tribute in St Cuthberts Church Wells. Personalstories have been told and Jenny has made two beautiful Remembrance Wall Hangings. 

Our June meeting started with a bang when the clock fell off the wall. Thankfully our speaker came to the rescue and order was restored.

Report of the May 2018 meeting of Wookey Hole WI

It has been such a busy year, it was almost a relief to arrive at the peaceful haven of our annual meeting, so that we could sum up all that has been achieved over the last twelve months. Last month we had the excitement of the Somerset Federation of WIs Centenary parade through Wells. We proudly carried our recently completed banner in the company of hundreds of fellow WI members behind the band and the Town Crier. And a contingent of our hard working ladies, together with members of Wells WI, womanned the tea and cake tables, and the notable quantity of washing up, in St Cuthbert’s Church. Two days later we relaxed, chatted and laughed over a delicious lunch at West Horrington to celebrate our own WI’s 71^st anniversary. 1947 is just within memory for some of us, but we seldom admit it.

At our meeting, President Jill Deane welcomed Lynne and Alison from Croscombe WI, who were present in an official capacity to oversee the election of our new committee and President. We thanked those committee members who had decided to retire, and welcomed the fresh contingent. Jill was re-elected unopposed as President. The Croscombe ladies also kindly judged the competitions, selecting with difficulty their favourites among a beautiful collection of garden flowers, and braving a selection of drawn and painted imaginary animals that you certainly wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark alley.

Rose Docherty

Report of the April 2018 meeting of Wookey Hole WI

President Jill Deane welcomed members and our speaker to the April meeting, which saw the unveiling of our newly completed banner. The design incorporates not only the famous cave and witch, and the date of the founding of Wookey Hole WI seventy one years ago, but also the colours of the suffragist movement which resulted in the granting of the vote to some women for the first time a hundred years ago. Jill thanked the members of the working party who had worked very hard to a tight time schedule to have the banner ready for us to carry it in the Somerset Federation Centenary Parade through Wells on 28 April this year. She also presented each of them with a souvenir mug featuring a photo of the banner.

Our speaker Miss Angela Pitt told us how she had volunteered to work at a Giant Panda rescue centre in China. While she was there she fed and cleaned up after a number of the bears, and took many candid photographs of their rather lazy life. Interestingly, the panda, as well as five fingers, has an extra thumb to help in grasping the stems of bamboo. She admitted that she once made what could have been a very dangerous mistake, in trying to hand feed one bear with an apple, she was bitten on the hand. Luckily there was an ambulance nearby and she was treated very quickly. Pandas have enormous appetites for their almost exclusively bamboo diet, each eating in a day as much as a man can carry. The rescue centre needs its own plantation of bamboo just to keep pace and cater to just six adult bears and a baby.   The Chinese people value the panda very highly, to the point of obsession, some even dye the coats of their dogs to match the markings.  Souvenir toys are available everywhere, and we remember that the panda was the mascot of the Beijing Olympics a few years ago.

She was thanked enthusiastically by Anne, who confessed to being a lifelong collector of panda related items since her first childhood soft toy.

Rose Docherty