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!

Our book last month was ‘She’s leaving home’ by Joan Bakewell. 

Preview available on –

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/She_s_Leaving_Home.html?id=O5p6g5v1M0oC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

We were all looking forward to this read, knowing the author as a journalist, television presenter and Labour Party Peer, and also as an author and playwright, who has been awarded Humanist of the year for services to humanism – according to Wikipedia!

However, we were all disappointed! The story was superficial and the style of writing we felt was almost child-like. This prompted us to check the date of publishing, expecting it to be an early work – but it was published in 2011! Though it was not necessarily written that year of course.

We met in Honora’s log cabin and shared our opinions, followed by a sociable chat, whilst being supplied with refreshments galore. The sweetie tray was well received! Thanks Honora.

This month’s book is ‘The keeper of Forgotten Things’ by Ruth Hogan, so we are all hoping for a good read to take on our holidays. We meet on the third Thursday of April to review it.

Well done to all the ladies – and Max – who braved the awful weather this Saturday (16th March) to pick up litter from around Kew roundabout in the year the WI is re launching its Keep Britain Tidy campaign. 
As well as all the litter we also found a £10 note in the bushes which has been donated to a plastic clean up charity.
We’ll let you know when the next event is and hope to see you there. Thanks to Sue, Lis and Carole for spreading the word – we are so glad you told us about this community group.

Daphne Richardson of Freshfield Fitness teaches Tai Chi and QiGong exercise classes in and around Formby. We learned the history of these arts as she explained it’s literal meaning was ‘Life’s Energy’ an holistic system of coordinated body posture and movement, breathing and meditation used for the purposes of spiritual health and the basis of martial arts. We then moved onto an introduction beginners class. This was a low impact exercise class and incorporated stretch and balance work. We learnt Tai Chi moves as as Cloud Hands, Yang Style Tai Chi Walking and Stroking the Horses Mane as well as some QiGong exercises.