Alnmouth WI, Meeting

After quickly going through outstanding business, Pam took over, giving us a full and interesting report of all that has happed in the past year, and boy there certainly has been a full programme of events since our 2017 annual meeting.

Our main task last year was fund-raising, given that this is now our centenary year. We, fortunately, managed to do enough to cover our overheads and actually enjoyed doing it as it’s always a good get together of members using their many talents.

Our main centenary event to start our year was the History Wardrobe ladies, who gave us a wonderful evening going through each decade from 1918 dressed appropriately, as were most of the members with an abundance of ‘suffragettes’ in evidence.

Our second great celebration was our WI marking 100 years of being in Alnmouth with a party. It starting with a well presented in-house buffet, then entertainment by The While Gardenias when most of us attempted to dance our supper off.

Our programme secretary Celia did us proud with interesting and entertaining evenings, as did Pam with our many outings of all descriptions, which most of us managed to get to.

Looking back, we did indeed have a busy year, including Di Spark, our assistant secretary and IT expert, setting up a secure mail system to keep our members informed as to what’s happening and setting up our own facebook group, which is certainly worth a regular look.

The annual meeting then commenced.

Prudence Marks, our expected WI adviser, was ill so we had Jo Dixon, from Stannington, who expertly took the helm.

The meeting followed the traditional format, covering finance, etc, then secretary Pam gave a very good annual report, followed by president Janis, who thanked the whole committee for their input, naming everyone individually and describing their talents.

Jo then went through our chosen Resolution, ‘The WI Supporting Mental Health’, which will be voted on at our annual meeting, which this year is in Cardiff.

She then went through the procedure of committee selection. There was no change and we were glad to hear that Janis will be staying with us for another year as president.

Hazel Shell thanked the committee and Jo for standing in at the last minute, which we greatly appreciated, and gave us a full report of the council meeting held in Newcastle, which she attended as our representative. This included a quite illuminating description of one of the speakers, who was suitably dressed in a beautiful Tudor costume, the subject being Sex And The Tudors.

Hazel also had the task of collecting our centenary certificate from the WI national chairman, which we all appreciated very much.

Pam was the birthday girl this month so she was presented with a lovely bouquet, and Jill Bourne won the Rose Bowl for the highest competition points.

Among Celia and Pam’s many talents, they are our archivists and had fitted time in to set up some wonderful old pictures of our WI from its inception in 1918, which we had to be dragged away from to start the meeting. Hopefully, we will see them at one of our meetings in the future.

We finished with a Northumbrian flavour – a ham and pease pudding filled bun and a good mug of tea.

Our May speaker is Stephenie Yearnshire, her subject being The Other Side Of Elvis, and the competition is an interesting Elvis fact or myth.beadnell