What a lovely way to celebrate one year as a member of Southport Scarlets by attending my first dining club experience. 

Due to work commitments this has previously been unachievable, however on Wednesday 23rd October I joined 11 other WI members at Volare Italian restaurant on Lord Street. 

Before selecting our preferences, (apparently some selections are predictable) I asked Jo whether reviews of the restaurants were carried out! I soon realised the main aim of these evenings were to enjoy good company, have a drink, eat, but not necessarily review the restaurant, therefore I’ve done my own personal review.

Although we waited quite a while for the starters to be served, when they were, comments from around the table resembled a night watching fireworks (lots of oooo’s and rrrrr’s). This continued as we tucked in. Clearly a good start! 

Presentation of the food was good, and we know this can be challenging especially serving pasta dishes, see photos. One particular main course, Penne Laguna, was referred to as bland, despite the mixture of chicken, courgettes and prawns, however I had Spaghetti Carbonara, which was creamy with plenty of bacon added. In addition to this, alcohol (like many restaurants) was expensive…£11.95 for two medium glasses of Rose, so as you can imagine the wine was drunk, leaving glasses empty! But were the plates empty? Generally yes, the leftovers only included bits of pasta, clam shells and bread. 

The atmosphere in the restaurant was welcoming and clearly the staff were attentive to their customers’ choices. So if you like a variety of fresh Italian food and you’re willing to wait, then Volare is suitable for you. 

As for reviewing the dinning club experience, I’m now wondering where the next event will be held, as joining the WI members on such an evening is definitely recommended, especially if you enjoy conversations that don’t include Brexit! 

Tina 

Spaghetti Vongole

Crab and Avocado starter

Carbonara

Wednesday 25th and Thursday 26th September

The show was held at the Garstang Country Hotel just 10 miles north of Preston. Emma and Pauline bundled all the craft items off and deposited them on the Sunday and the process was repeated on Tuesday by Elaine for all the fresh foods, cakes and bakes.
It was a first visit to a show for me so I didn’t know quite what to expect. Needless to say it was chocker full of ladies and no sooner had I got there I bumped onto a few of my fellow Scarlets which was lovely. I think it’s fair to say we had a record number of entries into the show this year too which of course is fantastic. We all know the judging can be quite harsh – enter at your own peril as it’s not recommended for any sensitive souls who may take their comments to heart. There was such an array of items – jams (of course!) cakes, knitted or crocheted jumpers, sugar craft, knitted hedgehogs, handmade jewellery, decorated hats, rag dolls, wreaths, photos, sketches and horticulture. I managed to take some photos (just before my phone conveniently ran out of battery!) Hope you enjoy them.

I must apologise for my tardiness with this month’s blog. As a rule we Scarlets don’t meet during August but arrange an outdoor activity. In previous years we’ve done a picnic in Hesketh Park, built sandcastles on the beach and arranged a treasure hunt around the Marine Lake area with a supper after. This year we went down to the Southport Bowling Club and two of their very friendly club members talked us through the rules, arranged us into teams and were very supportive and coached us the whole time. We rounded the evening off with a cuppa and biscuits in the club house. Ted talked about the history of the club. We didn’t know it is the only Flat Green Bowling Club in the Southport and Liverpool area and actually dates back to 1937. If you fancy a new hobby bowls is great for all ages, it’s a healthy outdoor sport and very sociable. They encourage you to try before you buy – equipment is available to borrow until you are sure the game is for you. Most of all they are a very friendly bunch.

The Liver Birds!

Three weeks of wall to wall sunshine and the morning we go to Liverpool is drizzly and cloudy!

We took the lift to the 10^th floor, but after that leg muscles were needed. We all made it to the top – 15^th Floor.

Luckily visibility was good and the views from the top were spectacular.

Did you know it was built from 1908 to 1911 for the Royal Liver Assurance Company. It was designed by architect Walter Aubrey Thomas.

It’s made out of reinforced concrete clad with granite, was the tallest building in Europe from 1911 to 1932 and the tallest in Britain until 1960 – the first skyscraper in Europe!

The Liver Birds were designed by German sculptor Carl Bernard Bartels and cost £70 each with an extra £10 per bird to fix them in place! It is 322 feet or 98 metres tall.

The clock faces are 25 feet or 7.6 metres in diameter, bigger than those on Big Ben in London.

In today’s money it cost £58,000,000 to build.

We finished the day with a lunch at Zizzi’s in Liverpool One.

National Federation of Women’s Institutes Annual Meeting

Bournemouth Wednesday 05 June 2019

Report from Southport Scarlets, Link delegate for 

Formby, Woolton, Woolton Wanderers and Knotty Ash WI’s.

After a rousing rendition of Jerusalem NFWI Chair Lynne Stubbings drew attention to some continuing activities planned for the year. These include walking netball which is a collaboration between England Netball and the NFWI that will see Walking Netball sessions provided to WIs across the country, the National Gallery study day which has the female nude as its theme, and the Performing Arts day on Friday 13th September 2019. Important campaigns to note are ‘Make Time for Mental Health’ post card action and the ‘Times Up’ mass lobby on climate change on the 26th of June. There is also a Team Federation project to encourage more volunteers to work for the WI. The WI has had a good financial year and attention was drawn to the new gift aid guidance and declaration forms.

Guest Speakers

The guest speakers were Lord Bradley from the Care not Custody Coalition and Maggie Philbin from Teentech.

Lord Bradley referred to his report on vulnerable offenders with poor mental health and learning disability and their experiences of the Criminal Justice system. He reminded conference that a WI resolution in 2008 based on the principle of care not custody voted to support the introduction of a diversion service based on the use of liaison officers in custody suites as part of a National Liaison and Diversion Service focusing on diverting vulnerable people away from the Criminal Justice system. Lord Bradley was confident that this service was operating effectively and was hopeful that it would continue to expand. He thanked the WI for our support.

Maggie Philbin gave an interesting speech about Teentech, a company of which she is CEO that goes into schools to encourage pupils to find technological solutions to social problems. Maggie gave some interesting examples of outcomes from this initiative which can be found on the Teentech website.

The Resolutions

The speakers for the resolutions were excellent and made the issues very clear.

First was the resolution against the decline in bus services. This resolution is extremely significant to the many WI’s in villages where privatisation of bus services has seriously affected bus timetables and village life. LCC funding has been cut to one third and the result is that services are sporadic, slow and impractical when people need to get to appointment. The result is that there is an increasing cost to the NHS transport system. Solutions offered are the promotion of a national bus investment strategy as well as a call that bus deregulation should include more use of technology in order to be more efficient.  Against these points the argument was made that instead of expecting a bus service it would be better to create systems of shared taxis and self-driving vehicles. The vote for the resolution was 5,729 and against 262 meaning that the resolution was carried by 96%.

The second resolution was Don’t Fear the Smear which has been tabled against a background of an inexplicable 21 year low in uptake of smear tests. Several delegates spoke passionately and movingly for this resolution and there was no real opposition to it. The main points were that appointments are hard to arrange, especially where women could not take time from work; there were calls to expand the HPV vaccine programme to include 12 to 18 year olds and to increase screening beyond the current cut off age of 65 as older women are still prone to develop cancer; most of all it was agreed that all women should talk to each other, their daughters, their relatives, their work mates and fellow WI members to remind women to go for the smear. The vote for the resolutionwas 5,788 and against was 194, meaning that the resolution was passed by 97%.

This very successful and enjoyable conference drew to a close with Jerusalem sung in English and then Land of our Fathers in Welsh and with God Save the Queen.

The evening was well attended with 12 of us enjoying Carol’s hospitality on a lovely evening with cake and wine to keep us going. 
We had a lively discussion about this months book, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet written by David Mitchell.
It was deemed a hard read but one which provoked much discussion partly because of the use of so many foreign names.  It was a story set on a Dutch trading trading post on a tiny man made island off the coast of Nagasaki in 18th century Japan. It was a long and complicated story but on the whole the consensus was that it was well written and worth the effort.

Vegan Banana Cakebread muffin recipe

I don’t know what to call these – they are an vegan alternative for the banana bread I was making for one of our meetings.  They have turned out great, so I thought I’d write the recipe down before I forget.  It’s an alternative to a vegan blueberry muffin recipe.

Ingredients

• 275g flour
• 175g unrefined sugar
• 2tsps baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 50ml vegetable oil
• 160ml non-dairy (soy or oat) milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup squashed very ripe banana

Instructions

1. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. Mix the vegetable oil, milk, banana and vanilla essence in a jug then add the mixture to the dry ingredients. DO NOT overmix – it should just be combined.
3. Put the mixture in muffin cases (makes 9ish depending on how big you like your muffins)
4. Cook in preheated oven at 200C/400F for 18-24 mins

Here are a few pics from our Garden Appreciation Group’s April trip out. We went to a lovely Bluebell wood near Whalley, then to the village of Downham which is set in the Ribble Valley District and hailed to be the most beautiful village in Lancashire with its gurgling brook running past the village green and stone built cottages. The village was used as location for Whistle Down The Wind and Born and Bred.

We finished off the day in The Garden Kitchen at Bolton by Bowland for afternoon tea. We managed to dodged the rain and saw lovely blossom and lambs. Gorgeous! 

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We invited a sewing buddie of ours to come along to a meeting to talk to us about India, the food and its people. I think we all know it is a densely populated country but certainly didn’t know it is the seventh largest country by area, the second most populous with more than 1.3 billion people. India has 29 states and its official language is Hindi, however can you believe there are 21 further languages? We were fascinated to hear details first hand of the social caste system Indians are born into, Europeans would probably call it a hierarchical system. The Brahmins (priests), Kshatriyas (military), Vaishyas (merchants and farmers), Shudras (peasants), Dalits (untouchables). Vatsala bought along a case of saris and fabulous jewellery for a dressing up session. Honestly we were like kids in a sweet shop. As a keen sewer and quilter Vatsala told us of Project Linus – an initiative to provide handmade blankets for babies who are seriously ill and wondered if there were sewers amongst us that would like to help. Let’s see how many we Scarlets can make.

Wednesday 27th March – The Kasturi Indian Restaurant.

11 lovely ladies enjoyed another evening of fun, friendship and laughter at what could be called our favourite Indian restaurant. Supper Club evenings are always lively occasions and the news sharing, gossip and ‘have you seen….’ started this week before we even got our popadoms; stalled slightly because somebody didn’t watch Sewing Bee last night. The Kasturi has an excellent range of main courses to satisfy our vegetarian as well as meat eating diners and of course there the are prawns, or Lis wouldn’t stay. Unfortunately the only issue was, we had no room for dessert. So if you need to pick up handy hints with clothes pegs, want to know who or what is unhinged or can work out which sister you need to ask for directions, we would love you to join us at the Legh Arms next month when you too could be as wise as we aren’t!