Once again the ladies of Chipping Sodbury Morning WI converged upon the Old Grammar School for their monthly meeting and didn’t we all have a lovely time with lots of laughter.

We started with the business, which was presented by our new president and secretary, the new committee was endorsed by the meeting and those retiring from the committee were thanked.    

Looking back on the past month everyone was delighted by the AGM lunch that was held at The Squire where we were beautifully looked after by the staff. It was such a fantastic way to end our AGM meeting that the members voted unanimously to make it an annual event. The craft afternoon was a wonderful social occasion where we did manage to produce beautiful little felt mice and eats scrumptious cakes provided by one of the members.

The meeting was reminded about the forthcoming coffee morning with bring and buy stall, raffle and quiz. Members were also asked to pick up the tickets they had ordered for the various AFWI events. What a busy lot of ladies we are.

Members were asked whether they would like to form a skittles team to play in the WI league and it was hoped we would have enough people to make a team. More news on this at our next meeting.

Following coffee our speaker Dr Francis Burroughs enthralled us with his talk about the ‘Wonderful World of Glass’. And what an enlightening talks this was we were told so much about the history of glass and were able to hold and examine very old and rare examples of glass from around the world.

I think we all learned things about glass that we never knew. So many ladies asked questions at the end that time ran out – it was an inclusive and superb presentation with some really funny quips from the speaker. We hope that Dr Burroughs will return in the future to expand on his talk and answer more questions.

Our next meeting will be our Christmas meeting with Christmas cake and sherry and a visit from our local historian Jim Elsworth who will talk about The Pubs of Sodbury.

Everyone is looking forward to this and we would be delighted to welcome visitors to our meeting on Tuesday December 19 at 10am at The Old Grammar School. Visitors can “try us out” by attending three meetings after which they will need to formally become a WI member.