For our monthly meeting we had a tour of Piccadilly and St James called “Putting on the Ritz”, given by Tina, a blue badge guide. We heard about various characters from the worlds of high society and finance as well as quacks and dandies who lived in the area over the last couple of centuries.  Everyone enjoyed the tour and some of us went on for a drink before heading home.

Angela

Some key dates in modern divorce law:

• The Age of Marriage Act 1929, made sure that both partner were over the age of 16 to be married.
• Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, was introduced to consolidate certain enactments relating to matrimonial proceedings. This granted a divorce on the basis of irretrievable breakdown.
• Under the Civil partnership Act 2004, same-sex couples can register a civil partnership, which has almost the same legal effects, rights and obligations as marriage does for mixed-sex couples.

We would all like to thank Penny for a wonderfully informative and interesting talk.

Book recommendation for further reading:

Fantastic Female Adventurers – Truly amazing tales of women exploring the world by Lily Dyu.

If you’d like to walk around the world, try this app https://worldwalking.org/apps

We have played an online version of Countdown – the letters and numbers game as seen on Channel 4. To play again visit here: https://01189998819991197253.org/

At this AM we welcomed our new committee starting with our new president: Angela, Frances, Caroline, Louise, Ilona, Rebecca, Ena, Deb.

Thank you for Yvette for advising us on the correct voting procedures! And thank you to Louise for hosting an obscure picture quiz.

November 2019 – October 2020

Meetings

It has been an interesting year, but we have managed to keep going with our meetings digitally to keep us entertained.

Date	Description
November 13th (2019)	Annual Meeting and Quiz After the administrative part of the evening, we enjoyed a quiz put on by Denise. The winning team won pens as prizes.
December 11th (2019)	Christmas party hosed by Louise We had a best socks/slippers competition, and everyone brought some food and drink to share.
January 8th	Resolutions. The following were presented and discussed: Increase potential stem cell donor registration Female crash test dummies End modern slavery Time to talk about death and dying Protect our precious helium
February 12th	Hula Hooping with Maz We had an active session of hula hooping with Maz. We learnt how to correctly control the hula hoop on our waists, and even on our arms! The NFWI sent their photographer Tasha Best to photograph our session, and as a result we have ended up being on the front page of the NFWI website!
March 11th	Quilted Pin Cushion Using scrap fabrics and a bit of stuffing Diana Darrer showed us how to make very beautiful and practical pin cushions.
April 8th	Easter eggs as characters & zoom chat Our first virtual meeting after the lockdown started. We had some fun showing and guessing some eggs and wooden spoons that we previously dressed up as book characters.
May 13th	Yoga,Pilates & Wellbeing – a practical session with Raquel A virtual Yoga and Pilates session with Raquel. We set our yoga mats up with our laptops and practised some yoga positions.
June 10th	Talk About Your Favourite Clothes Continuing with virtual meetings, we all wore or showed our favourite clothes. We heard some wonderful stories about handmade and couture gowns, wedding dresses, vintage jackets, old t-shirts and designer blouses.
July 8th	Sex, fruit, and rock-n-roll: how manakins became the tropics’ dance idols – Talk by avian ecologist Dr. Alice Boyle A wonderful talk given by Caroline’s sister. Once again digitally. We leant about the fascinating behaviours and dancing displayed by birds.
August 12th	Desert Island Discs We played music, spoke about our luxuries and books. The music playlist and all the items we talked about are up on the website in the “past meetings” section.
September 9th	Ditching Plastics – A talk by Wendy Paton Tonight we had a discussion with Wendy Paton about her journey to ditch plastics. She gave us 40 ideas on what we can do to do our bit for the environment.
September 30th	5th Wednesday Special Meeting: Louise on Jewish Cooking Traditions Louise has given us a special extra talk on Jewish Cooking Traditions. We learnt about all sorts of dishes as well as all the rules surrounding a Kosher diet. Some of the recipes are up on our website. Find them under “What we’ve done” -> “Recipes”
October 14th	Choux Pastry Live! – Janet Cummins Janet showed us how to make the perfect choux pastry live on zoom!

Clubs

Craft Club	We have kept up with craft club via zoom. All our members are welcome to join for a chat, even if they don’t have a craft to do at the moment.
Dining Club	It has not been possible to continue with dining club because of the lockdown. However when we were allowed to meet socially distanced outside we had some nice safe picnics in the park when the weather was favourable.
Walking Club	Like dining club, walking club was suspended until the lockdown restrictions eased. In September we were able to do a distanced walk around Fryent Country Park and visit the horses in the stables there. We also had 2 separate tours of Highgate cemetery.
Book Club	We have been able to open book club up to more members this year, as it is being held digitally just like all our other meetings.

Online Social Media

We have been using a members WhatsApp group to keep up with each other. Please get in touch with the committee if you wish to be added to it. Sometimes there are a lot of messages that come through on this group, if you feel overwhelmed by this, you can always set this group chat to “silent” on your phone.

We also have splinter WhatsApp groups for the various clubs and other events so that we don’t clutter the member’s WhatsApp chat with organisational details.

We have resurrected our Twitter account, and have has been tweeting about our activities.

Closing Notes

The committee would like to thank all our members for sticking with us through this difficult year. We hope to be back at the Mason’s Arms in Kensal Green as soon as it is safe to do so.

Our very own Janet showed us how to make the perfect choux pastry.

On account of this month have 5 Wednesdays, Louise has given us a special extra talk on Jewish Cooking Traditions. We learnt about all sorts of dishes as well as all the rules surrounding a Kosher diet.

Here is a recipe that Louise recommends for a Honey Cake.

Also a recipe for Honey & Cinnamon biscuits.