We have quite a few things on the go, this month!

We’ve got…

• The Annual Meeting
• Decorating tote bags
• A seed swap
• A book swap
• Annnndddd… cupcakes!

So, March is the month of our Annual Meeting.

This involves looking back at the last year (Sally’s annual poem is now a proud Hive WI tradition), nominating and voting in the 2022-23 President, and looking at our finances through the medium of a quiz.

Remember these from our first birthday?

They were made by Carol of Carol’s Nicely Iced. Carol’s cakes are now also a tradition at our celebrations and special meetings… look at what she’s been up to since we last saw her!

That looks amazing but, honestly, her humble cupcakes are some of the nicest I have ever had.

Here is a sneak peek at the tote bag supplies that will be waiting for you:

We’ll be providing stencils as well, or you can draw your design freehand… perhaps using your skills from the last meeting 👇👏

I love how different they all are! 💐

  → What To Bring To The Meeting

• A mug;
• A mask and hand sanitiser;
• Seeds for the seed swap;
• Books for the book swap.

→ Next Three Meetings

• April: The History of Knickers (Zoom)
• May: Resolutions and activities
• June: Morris Dancing with The Lady Bay Revellers

 → Subgroup Calendar

• Wednesday 16, 19:00: Supper Club at Sanchans Thai Restaurant
• Saturday 19, 14:00: Crafternoon
• Thursday 24, 19:00: Book Club (Zoom): Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Sunday 27, 10:00: Walk ‘n’ Talk (led by Hayley)
• Wednesday 30, 14:00: Cafe Society at The Djangoly Cafe

Book of the Month

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Synopsis from the author’s website:

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but demanding fiancee. Then one night he stumbles across a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her–and the life he knows vanishes like smoke.

Several hours later, the girl is gone too. And by the following morning Richard Mayhew has been erased from his world. His bank cards no longer work, taxi drivers won’t stop for him, his landlord rents his apartment out to strangers. He has become invisible, and inexplicably consigned to a London of shadows and darkness a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.

For this is the home of Door, the mysterious girl whom Richard rescued in the London Above. A personage of great power and nobility in this murky, candlelit realm, she is on a mission to discover the cause of her family’s slaughter, and in doing so preserve this strange underworld kingdom from the malevolence that means to destroy it. And with nowhere else to turn, Richard Mayhew must now join the Lady Door’s entourage in their determined–and possibly fatal–quest.

For the dread journey ever-downward–through bizarre anachronisms and dangerous incongruities, and into dusty corners of stalled time–is Richard’s final hope, his last road back to a “real” world that is growing disturbingly less real by the minute.

If Tim Burton reimagined The Phantom of the Opera, if Jack Finney let his dark side take over, if you rolled the best work of Clive Barker, Peter Straub and Caleb Carr into one, you still would have something that fell far short of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. It is a masterful debut novel of darkly hypnotic power, and one of the most absorbing reads to come along in years.

CAKE Fighters

The fight is on hold!

Nottinghamshire Federation is keen to get an online WI started. They asked me (Rosa) to help them get it going, which means putting CAKE Fighters on hold… for now!

The new online WI is called Home Birds WI. It will meet on the first Tuesday of the month at 19:00 on Zoom, starting from April.

They’re having a pre-launch meeting on Tuesday the 8th of March to make “posters for peace” for Ukraine. Feel free to pop in!

CAKE Fighters are going out on a high note, though. The white butterflies we made to help promote Broxtowe Women’s Project are currently being displayed in Stapleford Library (pictured below, with BWP staff and the Mayor!):

You can read more about it here.

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