Kibworth & Smeeton WI – September Update
Our last members’ meeting, on 12 March, seems light years away!
Angela Holland from Kibworth Garden Centre demonstrated ‘Planting for Spring’, inspiring us with ideas for creating beautiful containers and flower beds.
We were able to buy bulbs and plants from her, little realising how much time we would spend in our gardens in the coming months – and how busy Angela herself would become, taking orders and delivering them under Lockdown.
With no WI meetings for the foreseeable future, we decided that our Yearbook, in which we record each month’s meetings and activities, should record our very different lives brought about by the Pandemic.
The books are our archive and we hope that they will make interesting reading in the future.
Members were asked if they would like to contribute their stories, experiences and feelings to make it personal as well as factual.
We have poems, prose, funny emails – eg stories of cooking disasters and ‘lockdown hair’- both important subjects! Humour, we all agree, plays a big part in keeping our spirits up in challenging times.
A plethora of cartoons, photos and jokes in circulation helped, as did the sense of community experienced by so many.
This came with the help offered by local volunteers and businesses and the coming together, albeit at a safe distance, to clap for the NHS and key workers and many neighbours enjoying VE celebrations together.
Besides having more time to be in their gardens, appreciating our beautiful countryside on their daily walks, taking up old hobbies or trying new ones, groups of members have put their crafting skills to good use.
Made by Anne 
Made by Beverley
Some made scrubs for the NHS, others knitted or crocheted pairs of hearts following an NHS appeal.
One heart was for placing in the hand of seriously ill Covid-19 patients in hospital, the other was for loved ones unable to visit them – to create a comforting link.
Other groups have been knitting blankets and bonding squares for premature babies and their mothers and colourful blankets destined for mothers in Africa, who give birth in the fields, to wrap around their newborns.
With some easing in restrictions we are all now slowly getting used to a ‘new normal’ and looking at ways in which we can resume our meetings.
Safety, of course, is the priority for everyone and we have to accept that we will need to hold a different kind of meeting in the form of talks and demonstrations rather than practical sessions, while observing all of the measures to keep us safe.
Along with other groups and clubs in our village, we hope that we will be able to meet together soon.
Pat Sharman
Kibworth’s Parish Council VE/VJ Commemorative Bench
