A Happy and Busy New Year to everyone

Membership 2019  - New members  are welcome to join WeyBay WI – please email your details to weybay-wi@hotmail.co.uk for an application form.  Closing date for applications is Friday 15th February 2019 

Christmas is a memory and members will be thinking of the 2019 and what it will hold.  Weymouth has been bathed in sunshine since the Christmas holiday.  Remarkably little wind and high temperatures has made us all appreciate the town that we live in.  The amazing Christmas morning swim, a beach filled with dog walkers and families and the New Year celebrations around the town have set us up for a good year ahead.  Keep up to date with meetings on the What’s On page.  Your committee will remind members by email of the planned events.  Lots to look forward to – even if we can’t guarantee that the weather will remain so balmy.

As in previous years, WeyBay members enjoyed their traditional Christmas Party at the New Vic Bars.  The evening started with cocktails and was followed by a traditional Christmas menu and dancing to Mr Tambourine Man.  His lively style got everyone up onto the dance floor with their musical instruments and singing along to the songs everyone knows.  A great evening and an excellent start to Christmas and thanks should be extended to the committee for organising it.
MY SCENTED HOME
November meeting saw the start of Christmas with Catherine Nix
 from My Scented Home showing members how to make a classic door wreath.  She also brought along lots of lovely smelling items to buy.  It was a very well received evening and few of the ladies followed it up with a workshop in her cottage in Corfe Castle. 

On Friday 23 November a full coach took a trip to Bath to take advantage of Black Friday shopping and the Christmas Markets.  This popular trip has now become an annual event with thanks to Marisa for organising.   
DORSET FEDERATION ANNUAL MEETING
This year’s Dorset WI’s Annual Meeting at The Lighthouse in Poole was never going to be as exciting as last year’s Centenary - WeyBay weren’t singing!
But the meeting was opened by Christchurch WI with a very current sketch. They were dressed as Suffragettes and their song was both poignant and amusing.

The meeting continued with the usual round of updates and addresses and the morning ended with a surprisingly interesting speaker. If you think as the author did the talk “Passion for Pearls “was going to be boring you would be wrong. Frances Benton passion for pearls was kindled by her grandmother as a ten-year-old and she has loved them ever since. She told us about the value and rarity of natural pearls and the start of farmed pearls by Kokichi Mikimoto in 1893. He was able to mimic the natural process by implanting a nucleus into the oyster and the method he developed is still used today to form beautiful lustrous pearls.

A cracking talk and the afternoon speaker was even better! She was the Bake Off ‘s 2014 winner Nancy Birtwhistle and she was so funny! Nancy had an amusing start to her audition to Bake Off and arrived soaking wet from a rain storm with a soggy Lemon Meringue Pie after turning up at the wrong venue. She thinks her repartee with judges as she rushed in may have earned her a place on the show though of course it was her baking that made her the winner. Pastry was her speciality and the author is about to try out her unique method. Jam puffs anyone?

A thoroughly interesting meeting but not many WeyBay members present. It’s really worth booking up next year.
BOOK CLUBS
The three book clubs are a very successful part of WeyBay.   The members organise the group themselves taking it in turn to choose books to read.  The original book club is run by Louise Swinton and she had taken the time to write this report of the recently read books.  You will find it interesting and it should encourage everyone to get reading and maybe try something that they wouldn't normally consider.

So far this year we have read some old and some new books.

In January we read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Everyone really enjoyed this, even though some had read it a long time ago. We scored it 10/10 (unheard of before).

Beautifully  written through the eyes of the two children of Atticus Finch, it gave us an excellent insight into prejudiced life in a 1930’s small town in the Deep South. Atticus was employed to represent a young black man accused of the rape of a white woman.  Full of horror, humour and wisdom, this book is a “must read”.

Little Women by Louisa  May Alcott.  Again some of us had read this when we were young but we decided that to reread a book years later gives a different perspective.

This was based on the Author’s life and was published in 1868! It is a moral tale of family life around the time of the Civil War. The mother guides her four teenage girls to develop their own personalities yet to be aware of good family values. The innocence of those times is brought out well. We all loved the support the sisters gave each other and the simplicity of life was well described. How times have changed! 8/10 

Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga. This story is set in Mumbai and centres around a group of people who live in a block of dilapidated flats. The residents get along with life and each other in a an accepting way. Their whole existence changes when they are approached by a developer who offers them large sums of money to leave their homes so that he can demolish the building and rebuild his “dream” apartment block. The rest of the story centres around the greed, corruption and dreams of each flat owner. The descriptions of life in India are excellent. 7/10

THINGS TO DO
Have you checked out our Things to Do pages?  The WeyBay committee have been busy arranging trips and get-togethers for WeyBay's lucky members.  In the next weeks there are a cycling day in the New Forest and a visit to Morton Church planned as well as the monthly 'coffee mornings with a walk' and newly formed Lunch Club.  Keep an eye on the website to see what's going on or find out details from the monthly meetings. 
BOOK CLUBS

One of the more successful activities in WeyBay WI are the Book Clubs. Two have been running for a couple of years and now a third has been started. Each Book Club member gets the chance to recommend a book to the others and then it is discussed and the group decide on whether to recommend it. The meetings take place in a very social setting and they have spawned into doing other activities together. Go to the Things to Do pages to see what the groups are reading at the moment and what they have enjoyed most. You might get some ideas for Christmas gifts.

WeyBay members have joined an institution that was started 1915 and now has 205,000 members in 6,800 WIs.  It is the largerst voluntary women's organisation in the UK.  WeyBay is part of the Dorset Federation based in Dorchester. 
Each WI is self-governing within the framework of the WI constitution and rules.  
The WI is a diverse organisation open to all women with WIs in towns, cities and villages.
Denman College is an adult education centre in Oxfordshire run by the WI and courses run there are available to all members.
Regional events are organised and advertised in Dorset WI News which are handed out at meetings. 
Members have the opportunity to learn new skills, to take part in wide-ranging activities and to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities.  The possibilities are endless.
 
WeyBay WI adds one other important proviso - that members enjoy themselves!
 

Announcements

  • WEYBAY’S NEW YOGA and SOUNDBATH EXPERIENCE 15 of our members took up the whole new experience of Ashtang Yoga followed by a Sound Bath at Dorchester Yoga Centre last Sunday evening. Mark Winterburn taught us how ...
    Posted Oct 15, 2014, 4:47 AM by Sandra Jones
  • 2014 TRUST ME YOU CAN DO IT TRIATHLON Seven WeyBabes swam, walked and cycled in the second of the 2014 'Trust Me You Can Do It' Triathlon. The Triathlon was organised by Carolyn Lyness and started with a ...
    Posted Oct 6, 2014, 1:13 AM by Sandra Jones
  • EXPLORERS GROUP The third meeting of the Explorer group was on a breezy August Day and was organised by Carolyn Lyness.  She chose Worth Matravers in the Purbecks to explore and those ...
    Posted Aug 26, 2014, 1:16 AM by Sandra Jones
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