November 2025

Dear Members, I hope that you are all keeping warm as the temperature drops and we speed through November heading towards the Festive Season. In a few weeks we will have reached the Winter Solstice and the days will begin to get longer. It is time to immerse ourselves in the seed catalogues and prepare for next year's seasonal activities.

We had a good attendance of 32 members at our recent AGM evening. The business part of the meeting went smoothly as per the distributed Agenda. Margaret Burns and Terry Jewiss, outgoing Chair and Treasurer respectively, delivered their reports and then stepped down. Margaret thanked everyone for their support during her 16yrs tenure and highlighted the need for the Club to attract some younger members going forward to keep it viable.

 The officers and Committee were duly nominated and elected as follows; 

Elaine Maslin Acting Chair and Publicity Officer

Mary Belsey Secretary

Val Rutterford Treasurer

Carole Baker Membership Secretary

Committee Members; Colin Baker,Nicola Bundock,Sue Grace,Sylvia Harding,David Neale and Pat Waterman,

 Ian Clapp was appointed as Club President and Margaret Burns as Vice President. The previous holders of these roles, were acknowledged for their past contributions to the Club. The Committee are delighted to welcome our new volunteers, Val, Pat, Nicola and David Neale.

. Many thanks must go to Mary Belsey for all her hard work preparing the necessary paperwork for the AGM and for putting together, distributing and collating the Members Questionnaire. Thank you to all of you who filled one out , it will be really helpful to steer us in the right direction. Following the business we paused to say a huge thank you individually to Margaret, Terry and Ian and to take the opportunity to acknowledge their many years of service the club-94yrs between them ! Ian can lay claim to half of those on his own !!They we each presented with a gift as a token of our thanks. We then tucked in to a delicious fish supper kindly arranged by Mary, Terry, Carole ar Colin. So looking forward to our December meeting on Tues 16th at 7pm, Mrs Sophie Leathar will give us a talk entitled Myrrh, Mistletoe and Mischief which I am sure will infuse us with Christmas spirit. We will group the tables as we did at the AGM, you are welcome to bring festive eats a drinks to share with your table as we do at our Quiz evenings. Please bring plates, cutlery, glasses etc. The table top competition is a Christmas Wreath and will be judged as a stand alone contest.

 If we don't see you in December we would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Peaceful New Year

best wishes

Elaine Maslin Acting Chair