Our Chairman’s Message – November 2020

This week I looked at my royal blue WI diary for 2021 and hoped that I would be able to fill it with events, birthdays, holidays rather than this year’s very poor specimen of cancellations and blank pages. In this vein I thought about all the WIs who this year celebrated a special birthday and not only, in most cases, missed a party they were planning but also never received their certificates at the Annual Council Meeting which was postponed from April until October and then sadly cancelled for this year. We are all keeping everything crossed for 2021! Here, therefore is a list of all those WIs and along with the list comes very best wishes from myself and the Board of Trustees and a promise that you will receive your certificates in due course. Congratulations to you all and I hope you manage your belated parties next year.
As you read this Norma and I will have done a two day meeting of the National Council all via Zoom. I could well be in re-hab from sitting for so long in front of a screen trying to have meaningful discussions with the other sixty nine Federation Chairmen and Treasurers along with the National Board and staff from 104 Kings Road.
As I am sure you all appreciate, I receive a lot of messages from WIs and individuals on a very wide-ranging selection of topics and as you can imagine the regulations imposed by Covid are one of those subjects. As I write my message each month I can only stress the regulations that are in place at that time and we are all very well aware of how quickly things change – we know this very well here in the North East. We do still endeavour to let you know in the Newsletter what we would hope to do if and when the regulations go back to Rule of 6 or, even better, resumption for groups of 30 or less. I know that as I write this any change soon is unlikely, but then so was the recent change in this area which was imposed overnight. Please bear with us on this and look at our website and Facebook page for up to date information between Newsletters. Questions about subscriptions continue to be raised and will, I am sure, be a topic for discussion at the Zoom meeting mentioned previously.
Last month Norma mentioned that donations to Federation would be very welcome at this difficult time and I was absolutely delighted recently to open a card with a generous personal donation from former Northumberland Chairman, Marjorie Goodchild. Thank you so much for your help and continuing support to our Federation Marjorie.
Please all continue to keep in touch with each other and, however hard it is, continue to observe the rules. Stay safe and smiling, even behind your
masks because your eyes will tell if you are.
Marj x