surreyfed

NFWI events

In light of the ongoing spread of COVID-19 and the new Government advice regarding social contact, the NFWI has made the difficult decision to cancel the Annual Meeting at the Royal Albert Hall on 4 June, and to postpone the Wales Conference on 26 April until later this year. We have been keeping a very close eye on the situation over the last few weeks but as the number of cases is rising and advice is becoming stricter, we believe this is the most responsible decision to make, even at this distance from the June event. We make this decision with great sadness and we know many members will be very disappointed, as we are, but we always prioritise the health and wellbeing of our members above anything else. We are still working out the practicalities involved for both events, but we wanted to let members know as soon as possible.

You will still receive your Annual Meeting documentation in the upcoming NFWI mailing as this was signed off at the end of February. Please retain this documentation and we will be in touch to confirm how we will proceed with regard to the selection of this year’s resolutions.

Denman

Denman is postponing all courses and specific events that were scheduled to run until 12 April. Please contact Denman directly if you have a booking to discuss how you wish to proceed. We understand that many of you are concerned about current bookings and may wish to receive a refund, however we are all conscious of the financial impact this period of closure may have on Denman and therefore request you to consider postponing your booking to a later date rather than cancelling if this is possible. Please note that we will review all future courses again in a week’s time and will update you accordingly. Thank you for your continued support for Denman.

 Walking Netball

England Netball have announced that all netball activity is being suspended until further notice, which includes Walking Netball. Walking Netball hosts will be contacted directly to discuss further.

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A free gift for all Surrey WIs.

IF you have visited our Federation HQ at Guildford you must have admired the wall hangings depicting scenes of Surrey villages and towns, embroidered by their WI members initially to celebrate the Federation’s 75th anniversary.

A printed copy of the wall hangings was included in our Centenary Scrapbook. It contained each illustration, together with a brief written description of each panel (where available); further panels created for later anniversaries, plus entries for the 2018 Eileen Bowler competition to produce a wall hanging to commemorate our Centenary.

Sadly not everyone will see the original hangings or the Scrapbook, so we have put all the illustrations listed above into an A4 booklet: Stitches in Time. Each WI in the county will receive a free copy. This gives every member the chance to admire the skill and beauty of these panels, and read some of the fascinating and curious tales that accompany them, for example:

• Do you know that someone is buried upside down on Box Hill?
• Where you can see the cauldron of a white witch called Mother Ludlam?
• That a group of Surrey women slaughtered Danish warriors fleeing from battle in the 9th century?

Your free copy will be included in the delegates’ packs to be collected at the Annual Council Meeting. Copies will also be available to buy at £3 each.

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Cut cleaning costs and carbon footprints

Spring cleaning can be an eco nightmare. Many liquids in plastic bottles kept in the cupboard under the sink are pollutants. But many cleaning problems can be solved with the help of three simple items. Not only will you reduce your carbon footprint but you will notice how economically sound it is to ditch some of the expensive products.

White Vinegar is an excellent way to clean glass. Use equal parts of water and vinegar in a spray bottle on windows. It is especially good for removing stubborn water marks on shower screens. And while you’re in the bathroom, rub a vinegary cloth around the taps to get rid of any scale and a shiny result.

Vinegar is also a great way to clean stainless steel draining boards and sinks. To rid stainless steel cutlery of sour smells and stubborn spots just rinse in a mild solution of vinegar and warm water and rub dry.

To boost your laundry wash just pour a couple of spoons of vinegar into the tablet tray, use any programme on your machine in the usual way and your wash will be cleaner, brighter and minus any stubborn odours.

Bicarb mixed into a paste with water is a wonderful way of cleaning stubborn greasy marks in the oven. To unblock bathroom and kitchen sinks, tip a tablespoon of bicarb directly into the sink followed immediately by a cup full of vinegar and watch the bubbles as it cuts through the grease.

To freshen the fridge just keep a small bowl of water with dissolved bicarb and a wedge of lemon in there. Sprinkle dry bicarb on to bathroom sinks and baths to be rid of a build up of limescale marks and rise off for a twinkling shine.

Bicarb is a wonderful deodoriser, especially for shoes — just sprinkle a small amount directly inside and for fresh smelling carpets and rugs sprinkle bicarb around and vacuum off. To keep loos sweet smelling, tip a cup of bicarb straight into the bowl, leave for a hour, scrub round and flush. To clean hair brushes and combs, soak in a mild solution of bicarb for 15 minutes.

Lemons: putting spent skins directly into dishwasher cutlery baskets and spiking them on the top rack will cut through grease and keep machines smelling clean.

To clean microwaves, pop lemon skins into a jug full of hot water and “cook” for five minutes. Then wipe the microwave dry. Remove the lemon skins, pop your dishcloth into the same water and “cook” for a few minutes to sterilise your cleaning cloths.

Use lemon skins to clean chopping boards. Lemon juice in a mild solution of bicarb can be used to wash the kitchen floor. Lemon juice and salt mixed together will remove rust.

Your house will be twinkling in the spring sunshine and after these cost cutting efforts, don’t forget to polish your halo before treating yourself with the money saved.

— Gill Harris

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No mailing is anticipated for WIs at the end of February. There will be a delegate’s pack to be collected at the Annual Council Meeting and information will be available on our website; some will be for your representative but the rest will be for your WI.

Please tell the office of any changes to your venue, President, Secretary or Treasurer details as we use the information from MCS and your Annual Forms for all correspondence.

MCS reps should take members off the database if they have not renewed by March. To do this go into to the person’s individual details and change their status from Active to Inactive. A box will pop up: select a reason from the drop down menu and then press the confirm change button. Let me know if a member is taken off the database because she is late in renewing as I can reinstate her details without you having to re-enter them.

If a member who has paid her full subscription to your WI moves away, she should remain on your membership list with her address updated as she is still entitled to receive WI Life and should not be removed from your list until 2021. And don’t forget that you can find non-data sensitive documents on our website.

— Diane Sanderson, Federation Secretary

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Five minutes that really can save lives

Do you remember the launch of the TV programme Big Brother in the year 2000? An exciting prospect I thought, a fly-on-the- wall documentary in the genre of Castaway that was aired earlier the same year. Secretly, I had wished that I could have been part of the Castaway project. What a disappointment Big Brother turned out to be. It was not at all what I had expected, although it became a very popular format.

One thing inadvertently achieved by Big Brother, however, was to highlight the threat of cervical cancer. The up-front Jade Goody, mother of two, of the 2002 series was diagnosed tragically with cervical cancer and subsequently lost her battle, fought in the public eye, in 2008 at the age of only 27.

The publicity around her death led to a 12% increase in women, between the ages of 25 and 64 coming forward for cervical screening. Jade’s death spoke particularly to women in their 20s, including my daughter and perhaps you, who believed that they were invincible? This was a generation of women who took heed of the message and undertook cervical screening, just as my mother’s generation had been prompted to by the untimely death of Alma Cogan, the biggest earning female performing artist of her generation, who had a similarly publicised death from cervical cancer back in the ‘60s. Are you one who listened and acted?

However, this message seems only to have engaged with certain generations. Currently, several groups of women are not hearing the call.They are those aged 25 to 29, the over 50s, ethnic minority groups, women with disabilities and lesbian and bisexual women. Do they know that cervical cancer is the most common cause of cancer in women under 35? Cervical screening is designed to prevent cancer by detecting early changes.The earlier the diagnosis, the better the prognosis.

The WI has led health-focussed initiatives many times. After all, ‘to advance health for public benefit’ is one of the WI’s key objects. It is therefore shocking that we are returning to an issue that was first proposed in 1964 when Whitchurch-on-Thames WI’s resolution was adopted: That the [NFWI] urges Her Majesty’s Government … to treat as a matter of urgency the provision of comprehensive facilities for routine smear tests for cervical cancer.

The current, critical fall in the take up of this screening is why the WI is revisiting this initiative 60 years on. You may have heard a young WI member address the audience at the 2019 Annual Council Meeting. During the debate, she explained that she had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer and beseeched those present to support the resolution. So, what can we do?

One of my first impressions of social media platforms and the way they appeared to reveal the intimacies of life was a negative, Big Brother moment. But as the medium has matured it has become ever clearer that social media can be harnessed as a campaigning tool. It enables communication that is quick, easy and free. Social media is going to be utilised, alongside the printed word, to engage members in all our campaign initiatives, to inform and prompt, to encourage and share. Will you engage?

This month the Federation is putting the ‘5 Minutes’ campaign at the top of its agenda. So, what can you do? Talk to and inform relatives and friends. Run an information event in your local community, make calming lavender sachets and leave them in your library or doctors’ surgery with a message encouraging participation in the screening programme. There are many other ideas in the campaign action pack (available online and in hard copy from NFWI). Individual acts, however small, can make a huge difference and can save lives!

Carol A. Gartrell, Federation Chairman

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Thinking of all WI members who have been affected in any way by the recent bad weather.

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Welcome to the world of the #

THE hashtag world of SFWI awaits you at this year’s Annual Council Meeting, with the Public Affairs team exploring ways to help members take part in our Plastic Free July.

Hashtags can tell us how we can make small choices that together have a big impact on our environment, with tips and ideas as well as facts and consequences in a stand against single use.

• • #SFWI is our generic hashtag which will be used on social media.The lower case letters refer to specific campaigns we are running.
  • #SFWIsayno will be part of the campaign where we suggest things that people can say “no” to and the alternatives that are available.
  • #SFWIswaps is where we encourage straight swaps, such as using cloth bags for shopping, reusable cups, taking containers for meat and buying soap instead of shower gel.

We hope to encourage social media use, introduce members to the hashtag world and build on their expertise with the swaps hash- tag so that all can get involved.

You might think some of what is suggested is simply common sense and doing what wise WI members have always done. But, as Angie Leach, who chairs the team points out: “If everyone was still doing it then we wouldn’t be in the mess we are.”

Book a ticket to the Annual Council Meeting.

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SUNDAY 15 March 4.30P.M.

MEETING CANCELLED FOR EVERYONE’S SAFETY.

If you see this and know of anyone else who may have planned to attend, please let them know

A group from the Surrey-based Orpheus Centre will entertain members at our Annual Council Meeting at Dorking Halls on Monday, 16 March.

Orpheus is an independent specialist college that believes every young disabled person should have the same opportunities as their non-disabled peers and offers a personalised study programme focusing on building independence, communication and social interaction skills through the arts, supported housing and a personal care service.

Music weeks for disabled people piloted by Sir Richard Stilgoe and neurologist Dr Michael Swallow in the late 1980s were so effective that Sir Richard decided to found a place where disabled people and students could work together for longer than a week, creating new music and performing in public. The Orpheus Centre opened in 1998 at Sir Richard’s former family home in Godstone. Today it caters for 25 full time and 25 day students.

Its students have performed in venues all over the country, and appeared in the hit TV show Call The Midwife. Ann Lovelace, a volunteer with the centre, will tell stories of Orpheus and introduce alumni who will perform their chosen songs.

Book a ticket for the Annual Council Meeting.

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