November Newsletter

Hello everyone,

Our October meeting talk about Fine Cell’s work by Sarah Citron, who is also a WI member, was very interesting indeed. What a wonderful job they do giving Prisoners a purpose in life and a new set of skills to face the world again outside when they leave. 

Our AGM is on Tuesday 19th November. The current committee will be standing down, so we invite members to come forward to fill the 4 vacancies, which will include President, Secretary and Treasurer. Before then, we have a number of activities coming up which are listed below.

St Mary’s is still looking for volunteers to serve mince pies and mulled wine at their Charity Christmas Carol Service on 10th December. All the information about the event is below, please tell me if you are able to help them out, we are hoping to put a small team together. Alternatively you may wish to attend the event yourself.

This will be my last newsletter as President. I am proud to have been your President for the last three years, we have enjoyed some wonderful outings, activities and speakers.

See you all soon

Very best wishes

Rosemary

President Battersea WI
E: presidentbattersea@surreyfedwi.org.uk

AGM & MEMBERS MEETING TUESDAY 19th NOVEMBER at 7pm 
Representatives from Surrey Federation will be attending our AGM this year. After the AGM we will be making Christmas doves.

Western Riverside Waste Authority recycling centre, Wandsworth 
Wednesday 6 November
 WRWA sits beside the Thames in Wandsworth and handles all the waste from our borough, and from Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Lambeth too. Its education team have offered us a behind-the-scenes tour to see for ourselves how that gets sorted and recycled. The combination of automation and hand-picking is fascinating to experience, but please be aware that it’s also noisy and a bit smelly!
Fully booked – there is a waiting list

Christmas Wreath making – Sunday 1st December
Venue to be confirmed, cost of event £20 (payment in advance) which includes all materials.

Charity Christmas Carol Concert 10th December at St Mary’s Battersea, 7pm-8pm
This year’s Charity Christmas Carol Concert fundraiser is for the KLS 100 Appeal. Organisers plan to give everyone a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie after the event, and have asked if Battersea WI could help out.  If you would like to volunteer please contact Rosemary.

The Art Group met for a bit of craftivism, making orange flowers to adorn the headquarters of Surrey Federation in support of the campaign against Gender Based Violence. The flower installation will be up from 25th November to 10th December. We made the flowers from fabrics and recycled plastic bottles, painting the creations, adding beads, buttons and pipe cleaners. A very active and enjoyable morning achieving a colourful and ‘blooming marvellous’ display !

Battersea Bookends October read was the first part of Alan Johnson’s autobiography, This Boy. For once we all enjoyed it. It was very much a social history of a time a lot of us lived through. Talk ranged over our own knowledge of the Ladbroke Grove area where he grew up and experiences at school. Many of us plan to read the further volumes of his autobiography. Our next book is Amor Towles’ Rules of Civility.

Boozy Books – Our book for October was The Housemaid by Freida McFadden. “Welcome to the family,” Nina Winchester says as I shake her elegant, manicured hand. I smile politely, gazing around the marble hallway. Working here is my last chance to start fresh. I can pretend to be whoever I like. But I’ll soon learn that the Winchesters’ secrets are far more dangerous than my own…” We had varied views on this book with some giving it 3/5 and others 5/5. At times the abuse and violence was disturbing. It was twisty, surprising, and clever. The author used the voices of both Nina and Millie to tell the story as it develops. Our next book is Homecoming by Kate Morton.

Chapter One Reading Group In October we read The Thursday Murder Group by Richard Osman. This is a very enjoyable best seller with well observed characters, humour and a rather complicated murder mystery. As the thriller writer Val McDermid said of it: “A warm, wise and witty warning never to underestimate the elderly”. As a starting point for discussions it set us up to explore various topics including: joy and kindness in everyday life, unexpected skills, aging, what our memories mean to us and how we keep our minds sharp.
 At our next meeting we will discuss To Battersea Park by Philip Hensher.

October saw the first meeting of our new Craft Group. We met at Battersea Arts Centre to learn about and develop our skills in the Japanese  rural domestic craft of Boro and Sashiko. Sashiko is type of embroidery or stitching used to carry out visible decorative repairs to old clothing. Boro is the materials that have been repaired with layering and stitching layers together.  It was a great session and everyone enjoyed the meditative quality of hand sewing.

Exhibitions group went to the British Museum to see their latest exhibition Silk Road.  The subject matter of the exhibition was interesting with some wonderful objects but there was so much to read and so many people queuing to view them that it was difficult  to see, and the flow of the narrative was lost. The subject would have been better covered by a TV series. We still enjoyed the outing together, finding a lovely Italian coffee shop close by.

Eight of us went to Clapham Picturehouse to see “The Room Next Door”. This is the first feature-length, English-speaking film actually scripted by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. The film follows Martha (Tilda Swinton) and Ingrid (Julianne Moore), old friends with a dormant relationship, who meet up again when one is diagnosed with terminal cancer and decides to take the euthanasia option. We were all affected by the film for different reasons – we could have had a longer discussion about all the points the film raises.

In October we ate at Soif trying out their Monday night Chicken Special. This was a very popular event and the restaurant coped beautifully with a large group. Our next meal out is in January at Gordon Ramsay’s Bread Street Kitchen in Battersea Power Station. In November, we will be celebrating Bake Off.

Horsley Loop Walk We were lucky with the weather for our extra walk in mid-October, when seven of us plus greyhound caught the train down to Surrey for a day out walking the Horsley Loop. This ten-mile circular route through woodland north of Guildford introduced us to an extraordinary group of Victorian buildings, all created in the 1860s by William Kingsley, First Earl of Lovelace. He funded them from the fortune left him by his first wife Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and celebrated mathematician. Our route was both picturesque and autumnal; we passed many different kinds of fungi, and saw quite a few other ornate estate buildings incorporating decorative bricks from the Earl’s own brickworks. The the final section of the walk took us into the parish church, with a fancy brick mausoleum for the Earl in the churchyard, past Horsley Towers (once his home, now a luxury hotel) and back to the station.

The weather for our regular first Friday of the month walk was equally lovely, with eleven members (plus our faithful greyhound mascot) wanting to check out the 2024-5 edition of Sculpture in the City. The trail is a pleasant short walk of a couple of miles, visiting some of the quieter corners of the Eastern side of the City of London. We found a great place for our coffee break, sitting in the sunshine outside a new cafe and wine bar tucked in beside Mitre Square Garden. Then heading off to Liverpool Street station, we enjoyed the new permanent installation Yayoi Kusama’s Infinite Accumulation, created for the new Elizabeth Line entrance to Liverpool Street station.

Battersea WI is a member of the Surrey Federation of WIs. For more information about news and activities with the Federation, visit their website here. For information about the National Federation, click here.

CURRENT CAMPAIGNS

THINKING DIFFERENTLY Seeking awareness of Autism and ADHD in Women and Girls

SEE THE SIGNS Raising awareness about the signs of Ovarian Cancer

STOP MODERN SLAVERY Raising awareness of Modern Slavery in the UK

STOP MODERN SLAVERY
THE CAMPAIGN SEEKS TO RAISE AWARENESS OF MODERN SLAVERY IN THE UK 

OTHER CAMPAIGNS