Fliss, our president, gave her address

She talked about the highlights of the year, which for her were:

The Race for LIfe which several members took part in and raised money in memory of Janet Blackburn

Burglar Bingo, which many of us enjoyed.  She reminded us of the spotty package, which everyone became determined to try and win!

The  Summer party and the games that we played and the laughter that we shared, not to mention the cheating that occurred during some of the activities!

The talk by Steve Morgan who had been a Greenpeace photographer for his career.  He shared wonderful experiences and photographs with us.

Fliss has been a fantastic president for 2 years and was presented with a gift from the members

Sarah Louise Long gave a review of the year and an annual report. She included photographs to remind us of the year we had shared and what we had done

Libby Wood gave the Treasurers Report and the accounts were reviewed and approved.  Libby also told us that we had raised £1200 for Overgate Hospice.

We went to the Egg Factory where Amy and Sue Mellis guided us to create some lovely items.

We were all given an embroidery hoop and some fabric and were shown how to transfer letters or patterns onto the fabric by way of screen printing

The prints were then embellished with stitches to create some lovely designs

It took a lot of concentration and even members who had little experience of stitching, made some lovely items

It was a really good evening, made better by the chat and friendship that we had sitting around the tables undertaking the task in hand.

Harriet Eames came from Overgate Hospice to talk to us.  Overgate is our current charity of the year

Harriet explained a lot of things about Overgate including its history, how it started, how it is funded, the service it offers to people, and the plans for its future 

She explained why fundraising is so important to the hospice and organised a quiz to test how much we had been listening!

We had great fun playing Burglar Bingo and many of us took home nice prizes 

Steve O’Connor came to run this evening for us

Steve who is originally from Manchester, teaches English and Creative Writing and has done poetry performances.  He has a book which is to be published this year

He explained lots of aspects of poetry to us – what it is, the themes that are often used, whether poetry should rhyme or not, rhyming schemes, and metres often used.

We had many exercises to try out and we all ‘had a go’ at writing

We shared our attempts.  The theme was ‘love’.  Many poems were amusing, some serious and thought provoking, and many demonstrated what talented women we have in our group

I think however, that my favourite on the night was Annette’s poem about the love her small son has for his tractor!

We were given a talk by Christine Booth from Shibden Hall in Halifax

She gave an amazing insight into the life of Anne Lister who was born in 1791 and lived at Shibden Hall in Halifax.  She died in 1840, but achieved many things in her life.  She was a remarkable business woman, a traveller and mountaineer.

Though we were told about her family background, childhood and her schooldays, education, daily life and work, the focus of the talk was Anne Lister’s diaries.

Anne kept diaries from her schooldays throughout her life.  They were written in code, which was developed to keep the contents secret.  They detailed her daily life, education and work but also her relationships with women throughout her life.   This was all logged in both diaries and schoolgirl notebooks.  It is thought that the code was developed to keep the details of her raltionships secret from her lovers’ husbands.

Whittling and Foraging

We met on a tempestuous October evening among the swirling leaves to get in touch with our more natural selves curtesy of Leona and Leonie from Calderdale’s Live Wild. We started the session by going outside and standing in a circle and closing our eyes to open our senses to the natural world. It was a good night for it, with leaves scuttling around and the river babbling loudly nearby. When we returned in doors we split into two groups one group having a go a whittling.

This was social, good fun and surprisingly easy. So much so, that I am now the proud owner of a homemade Skirtle (a porridge stirrer for the uninitiated). We swapped groups half way through the evening and talked about foraging concentrating on what was available at this time of year.

Leonie introduced us to drinks made from Rowan and Elderflower berries and nettle tea.

There was even time for some of the more creative amongst us to make a bracelet out of nettles. Our evening ended as usual with cake and tea with the lovely edition of cheesy scones; thank you to Ann for those. Anyone wishing to pursue woodcraft further can get in touch with Live Wild at: http://www.livewild.org.uk or on Facebook: livewildcalderdale. Thank you to Live Wild for being such lovely company and opening up a little of what goes on in the woods in Calderdale for us.
Jeni Wetton.

Nicole Wickenden came to do Zumba with us.  What a fun night we had.

She told us the history of Zumba and explained that it started almost by accident in Columbia in the 1990s.  A fitness instructor arrived at his class without his usual music and improvised with some Latin dance music.  The people in his class enjoyed it so much that they asked him to use it again.  Zumba then spread to America and is now used worldwide

Nicole is a trained instructor and very gently took us through our paces.  She was a great teacher and made us all laugh a lot.  The workout gave us a good appetite for cake!