April 2022 - Our speaker this month was Bronwen Guest (of the Malpas Fabric Arts Group) taking us on “My quilting journey so far”
And what a journey! A journey perhaps better named Quilting With Attitude – those of us in ‘the front row’ needed to keep alert because some of the quilts that Bronwen unfurled with a flourish from their bags as she perched on a stepladder were small catches! Bronwen firstly defined for us ‘quilt’ (a piece of wadding cloth sandwiched between two pieces of fabric) before launching into an exposition of a learning journey that began 30 years when she joined the Malpas Fabric Arts Group to ‘get to know’ people. She hasn’t looked back since. Despite some setbacks, she took us from her first relatively simple early efforts (one was eaten by her daughter’s dog and the second by mice) through to her more recent works of art. Which is the best way to describe them. Bronwen is driven by the desire to learn something new and consistently challenged herself – as well as the bureaucracy of quilt-making and makers – to experiment with new patterns, ideas, colours and fabrics. That piece of material she succumbed to at a quilting fair will always come in useful.
And no she doesn’t sell her pieces. She keeps them, or makes pieces for a local women’s refuge. Her sheer enjoyment for her quilting work sparkles out of every piece.
Bronwen has donated her speaker fee to charity.
March 2023 - Mia Munnerley talks to us about sustainable gardening
Whatever your physical capabilities, or the knowledge that you feel you (don’t) have, Mia, our very own local RHS trained horticulturalist, provided a perfect and illustrated introduction to simple ways of improving our horticultural impact on the planet. Her mum who lit the spark of passion for plants and soil (‘early intervention’ is important) and Mia now works at HoltUnder5s, continuing to inspire a hands-on approach to our environment in the next generation.
Mia structured her talk around Ten Top Tips for sustainable gardening:
It needs to start with us, and every little bit we do, from building Bug AirBnBs with kids to asking for peat and plastic-free pots of plants, can help bring back a… moth or beetle or bird.
February 2023
Francis Illing give us an introduction to CPR and the defibrillator
This month Francis, a speaker and villager familiar to many of us for his sense of humour, gave us a brief introduction to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and the defibrillator. Francis is a qualified, professional First Aider and Trainer with experience gathered over years in the police with military firearms, ambulances and local groups such as ours, etc.
Francis began by giving us a brief description of what and why a heart attack is, including the dispiriting knowledge that women are both more susceptible to heart attacks and less well-served by the (historically) male-dominated medical profession. The signs of heart attack in a woman differ from those in a man – we typically appear to be suffering from extreme indigestion (rather than the more commonly described pain down left arm etc).
We need CPR if our heart and breathing stops and so… we get no oxygen to the brain. And CPR is designed to keep us going until the Defibrillator (followed by medical care) arrives. The Defibrillator shocks the heart in to complete stop mode enabling (we hope) it to reboot and to start again with all its pacemakers functioning in sync.
We all had the opportunity to practice CPR on a person (well, a whoopee cushion shaped like a person’s head and chest). And Francis gave us some tips on keeping ourselves safe and managing different situations (can’t get down on the floor? – use your foot instead of your hand) (in the middle of … a field? – use What Three Words to give your location).
Francis then showed us a Defibrillator and demonstrated the way it works. With instructions in clear pictures and clear audio you press the ‘on’ switch and simply do what it ‘says’.
Take home? Something is always better than nothing
January 2023
Sarah and Sue Langton of Bickley Bank Smallholding and Bank Cottage Nurseries
Sarah and Sue kicked off our 2023 speaker schedule by telling the tale of Bickley Bank Smallholding. In 2017 Sarah returned to the UK and the family fold, taking the opportunity to move into a dilapidated cottage with 2 acres (seemed like a good idea at the time). In five short years, motivated by an insatiable enthusiasm and eye for a future in which she and her partner Phil and mother Sue could be self-sufficient in high-welfare and organic food for their family, Sarah has grown a thriving family of animals, vegetables and two children.
The business developed gradually alongside careers in pharmaceutical sales, tree surgeoning and parenthood. Sarah, Sue and Phil began with (Hebridean) sheep, adding goats (Dylan and Daisy), cows (Aberdeen Angus), 4 more acres + a wooded plot, Tamworth pigs, Mangalitza pigs (think pig in sheep’s clothing)… and two polytunnels.
With a spirit and adventure rather than a farming background, everyone learnt on the job. Sarah paints a charming picture of the Good Life, and the ‘accidental’ and apparently serendipitous choice of animals and plants that are suited to the hill site that they farm. Her mother Sue’s amusingly wry asides – as well as the success of the business – are testimony to the fact that a lot of thought, intelligent planning and well as hard work in not always clement weather has gone into developing the business.
A good-news 2020 Covid lockdown story for once, Bickley Bank Smallholding benefited from both the hard work of its two adults full-time as well as from the surge in customers beginning to learn about their gardens – and wanting the type of support that Sarah, Phil and Sue’s expertise and products could supply. Two years later Sue has added Bank Cottage Nurseries to the mix, alongside turkeys and ducks (of course – it seemed like a good idea), and expanded into sunflower patches, pumpkin patches and children’s workshops to provide local people and businesses with plants and local children with fun activities.
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ – and so it proved!
October 2022
This month Chris Meredith from the Welsh Dee Trust gave us a presentation entitled “It shouldn’t be in the Dee”
Perfectly coinciding with the national Great Big Green Week, we dipped our toes into the river Dee and as a result got to know a great deal about more about the life and lives of the river. Weaving his presentation expertly through his information and our questions, Chris helped us to help us understand how important the Dee is to our daily lives. Many and various are the groups involved in using and looking after different sections of it, from wildlife trusts to farmers to water supply companies. The Welsh Dee Trust is the only group whose remit is to look after the whole of the river Dee and its catchment area. Chris illustrated the Dee’s need for support by citing a concern, raised about 100 years ago, that the number of salmon lifted from the Dee annually had dropped to 10,000; to [ut that number in context, last year the number of salmon caught in the Dee numbered 320. I personally was taken by the news that one species of fish is unique to Llyn Tegid (part of the Dee’s catchment area). Chris took us through the Trust’s 5 stated programmes, designed to try and balance the needs of all the inhabitants, from wildlife to farmers to drinkers in Liverpool and Wrexham to paddle-boarders and water supply companies: 1) restoring river habitat 2) water wise farming 3) it shouldn’t be in the Dee 4) catchment based approach and 5) environmental flows. Taking a positive approach to the needs of all the river / catchment area users, their small team helps farmers fill in grant forms, builds up eroding river banks with branches to create a slow, incremental rebuilding of the bank, plopping rocks and branches into rivers to create pools and differently paced waters to enable fish young and old to live, breathe and breed in the river. By restoring the Dee to something like its ‘original’ state, the Trust hopes to enable the Dee to support all its users all by itself. Inspired we went on to do our own litter pick along the Dee in Farndon!
This month (August 2022) Francis Illing gave us the low-down on the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (otherwise known as FANY)
Francis whisked us through a brief history of our understanding of first aid between the 11th century and 21st century from first apparitions in the form of Knights of St John tending to the sick pilgrims in Jerusalem through to the formation of the Red Cross (and Red Crescent) in the 19th Century at the First Geneva Convention. Of particular interest were some of the ‘olden’ first aid techniques that Francis shared with us, most memorable of which being (as much for the accompanying visual as for the content) the remedy for constipation in a baby which apparently required insertion of a slither of carbolic soap into afflicted child’s anus. Scarcely stopping to draw a breath, Francis took us over to the life and various times of the FANYs themselves. Set up to assist to civil and medical authorities, the FANY continues to provide this service. Early nurses, characterised by Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Carla Barton, were distinguished by their formidable administrative abilities and these were put to good use once men realised that there was an untapped resource in their womenfolk. Women, it seemed, could DO something more than sigh and have hysterics. FANYs by and large were well-educated and middle or upper middle class women, because to qualify to sign up they needed to have a private income. The histories of the Crimea, World War One and World War Two demonstrate their skills both in medicine and other areas for example driving and mechanics as well as languages and spying. All performed at the front and thus all requiring a degree of feistiness that perhaps had not previously been recognised or admitted. It is, however, sobering to be reminded that it is the propensity of humans to indulge in warfare that provokes some of our most useful leaps forward.
Our speaker this month (July 2022) was James Davison speaking on “Trans* Historical: the historical validity of trans* identities”
Well what an illuminating – and challenging – talk this proved to be! I can’t pretend that I am now fully conversant with the terminology but I am getting there and I am clear about two things: (1) the term ‘sex’ is used primarily to describe the biology of our bodies and the term ‘gender’ is used primarily to describe the attributes that society ascribes to the sex and (2) the world is not, and never has been, binary i.e. black and white. James took us on a whistle-stop tour of the terminology that is currently used to describe the way people feel about themselves. Using evidence from archaeology – focusing on Anglo-Saxon grave contents (James’ speciality) and the Vikings (James’ passion), through art, sociology and literature he then went on to demonstrate that, historically, people have always been fluid in their relationship between sex and gender. In the earliest times it seems that people were actually defined rather in terms of the tasks they fulfilled in their society and only gradually did the concept of a binary ‘male’ ‘female’ world creep into our civilisations. Interestingly I don’t think that the words male or female cropped up at all during the talk.
James enabled questions throughout the talk which gave us all an opportunity to clarify anything we were unclear about and lead naturally into a discussion and some interesting questions following the talk.
And what a journey! A journey perhaps better named Quilting With Attitude – those of us in ‘the front row’ needed to keep alert because some of the quilts that Bronwen unfurled with a flourish from their bags as she perched on a stepladder were small catches! Bronwen firstly defined for us ‘quilt’ (a piece of wadding cloth sandwiched between two pieces of fabric) before launching into an exposition of a learning journey that began 30 years when she joined the Malpas Fabric Arts Group to ‘get to know’ people. She hasn’t looked back since. Despite some setbacks, she took us from her first relatively simple early efforts (one was eaten by her daughter’s dog and the second by mice) through to her more recent works of art. Which is the best way to describe them. Bronwen is driven by the desire to learn something new and consistently challenged herself – as well as the bureaucracy of quilt-making and makers – to experiment with new patterns, ideas, colours and fabrics. That piece of material she succumbed to at a quilting fair will always come in useful.
And no she doesn’t sell her pieces. She keeps them, or makes pieces for a local women’s refuge. Her sheer enjoyment for her quilting work sparkles out of every piece.
Bronwen has donated her speaker fee to charity.
March 2023 - Mia Munnerley talks to us about sustainable gardening
Whatever your physical capabilities, or the knowledge that you feel you (don’t) have, Mia, our very own local RHS trained horticulturalist, provided a perfect and illustrated introduction to simple ways of improving our horticultural impact on the planet. Her mum who lit the spark of passion for plants and soil (‘early intervention’ is important) and Mia now works at HoltUnder5s, continuing to inspire a hands-on approach to our environment in the next generation.
Mia structured her talk around Ten Top Tips for sustainable gardening:
- Pollinators
- (un)tidiness
- Compost
- Peat free
- Plant a tree
- Water butts and grey water
- Planting
- Encourage wildlife
- Chemical warfare
- Keep it local
It needs to start with us, and every little bit we do, from building Bug AirBnBs with kids to asking for peat and plastic-free pots of plants, can help bring back a… moth or beetle or bird.
February 2023
Francis Illing give us an introduction to CPR and the defibrillator
This month Francis, a speaker and villager familiar to many of us for his sense of humour, gave us a brief introduction to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and the defibrillator. Francis is a qualified, professional First Aider and Trainer with experience gathered over years in the police with military firearms, ambulances and local groups such as ours, etc.
Francis began by giving us a brief description of what and why a heart attack is, including the dispiriting knowledge that women are both more susceptible to heart attacks and less well-served by the (historically) male-dominated medical profession. The signs of heart attack in a woman differ from those in a man – we typically appear to be suffering from extreme indigestion (rather than the more commonly described pain down left arm etc).
We need CPR if our heart and breathing stops and so… we get no oxygen to the brain. And CPR is designed to keep us going until the Defibrillator (followed by medical care) arrives. The Defibrillator shocks the heart in to complete stop mode enabling (we hope) it to reboot and to start again with all its pacemakers functioning in sync.
We all had the opportunity to practice CPR on a person (well, a whoopee cushion shaped like a person’s head and chest). And Francis gave us some tips on keeping ourselves safe and managing different situations (can’t get down on the floor? – use your foot instead of your hand) (in the middle of … a field? – use What Three Words to give your location).
Francis then showed us a Defibrillator and demonstrated the way it works. With instructions in clear pictures and clear audio you press the ‘on’ switch and simply do what it ‘says’.
Take home? Something is always better than nothing
January 2023
Sarah and Sue Langton of Bickley Bank Smallholding and Bank Cottage Nurseries
Sarah and Sue kicked off our 2023 speaker schedule by telling the tale of Bickley Bank Smallholding. In 2017 Sarah returned to the UK and the family fold, taking the opportunity to move into a dilapidated cottage with 2 acres (seemed like a good idea at the time). In five short years, motivated by an insatiable enthusiasm and eye for a future in which she and her partner Phil and mother Sue could be self-sufficient in high-welfare and organic food for their family, Sarah has grown a thriving family of animals, vegetables and two children.
The business developed gradually alongside careers in pharmaceutical sales, tree surgeoning and parenthood. Sarah, Sue and Phil began with (Hebridean) sheep, adding goats (Dylan and Daisy), cows (Aberdeen Angus), 4 more acres + a wooded plot, Tamworth pigs, Mangalitza pigs (think pig in sheep’s clothing)… and two polytunnels.
With a spirit and adventure rather than a farming background, everyone learnt on the job. Sarah paints a charming picture of the Good Life, and the ‘accidental’ and apparently serendipitous choice of animals and plants that are suited to the hill site that they farm. Her mother Sue’s amusingly wry asides – as well as the success of the business – are testimony to the fact that a lot of thought, intelligent planning and well as hard work in not always clement weather has gone into developing the business.
A good-news 2020 Covid lockdown story for once, Bickley Bank Smallholding benefited from both the hard work of its two adults full-time as well as from the surge in customers beginning to learn about their gardens – and wanting the type of support that Sarah, Phil and Sue’s expertise and products could supply. Two years later Sue has added Bank Cottage Nurseries to the mix, alongside turkeys and ducks (of course – it seemed like a good idea), and expanded into sunflower patches, pumpkin patches and children’s workshops to provide local people and businesses with plants and local children with fun activities.
‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ – and so it proved!
October 2022
This month Chris Meredith from the Welsh Dee Trust gave us a presentation entitled “It shouldn’t be in the Dee”
Perfectly coinciding with the national Great Big Green Week, we dipped our toes into the river Dee and as a result got to know a great deal about more about the life and lives of the river. Weaving his presentation expertly through his information and our questions, Chris helped us to help us understand how important the Dee is to our daily lives. Many and various are the groups involved in using and looking after different sections of it, from wildlife trusts to farmers to water supply companies. The Welsh Dee Trust is the only group whose remit is to look after the whole of the river Dee and its catchment area. Chris illustrated the Dee’s need for support by citing a concern, raised about 100 years ago, that the number of salmon lifted from the Dee annually had dropped to 10,000; to [ut that number in context, last year the number of salmon caught in the Dee numbered 320. I personally was taken by the news that one species of fish is unique to Llyn Tegid (part of the Dee’s catchment area). Chris took us through the Trust’s 5 stated programmes, designed to try and balance the needs of all the inhabitants, from wildlife to farmers to drinkers in Liverpool and Wrexham to paddle-boarders and water supply companies: 1) restoring river habitat 2) water wise farming 3) it shouldn’t be in the Dee 4) catchment based approach and 5) environmental flows. Taking a positive approach to the needs of all the river / catchment area users, their small team helps farmers fill in grant forms, builds up eroding river banks with branches to create a slow, incremental rebuilding of the bank, plopping rocks and branches into rivers to create pools and differently paced waters to enable fish young and old to live, breathe and breed in the river. By restoring the Dee to something like its ‘original’ state, the Trust hopes to enable the Dee to support all its users all by itself. Inspired we went on to do our own litter pick along the Dee in Farndon!
This month (August 2022) Francis Illing gave us the low-down on the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (otherwise known as FANY)
Francis whisked us through a brief history of our understanding of first aid between the 11th century and 21st century from first apparitions in the form of Knights of St John tending to the sick pilgrims in Jerusalem through to the formation of the Red Cross (and Red Crescent) in the 19th Century at the First Geneva Convention. Of particular interest were some of the ‘olden’ first aid techniques that Francis shared with us, most memorable of which being (as much for the accompanying visual as for the content) the remedy for constipation in a baby which apparently required insertion of a slither of carbolic soap into afflicted child’s anus. Scarcely stopping to draw a breath, Francis took us over to the life and various times of the FANYs themselves. Set up to assist to civil and medical authorities, the FANY continues to provide this service. Early nurses, characterised by Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Carla Barton, were distinguished by their formidable administrative abilities and these were put to good use once men realised that there was an untapped resource in their womenfolk. Women, it seemed, could DO something more than sigh and have hysterics. FANYs by and large were well-educated and middle or upper middle class women, because to qualify to sign up they needed to have a private income. The histories of the Crimea, World War One and World War Two demonstrate their skills both in medicine and other areas for example driving and mechanics as well as languages and spying. All performed at the front and thus all requiring a degree of feistiness that perhaps had not previously been recognised or admitted. It is, however, sobering to be reminded that it is the propensity of humans to indulge in warfare that provokes some of our most useful leaps forward.
Our speaker this month (July 2022) was James Davison speaking on “Trans* Historical: the historical validity of trans* identities”
Well what an illuminating – and challenging – talk this proved to be! I can’t pretend that I am now fully conversant with the terminology but I am getting there and I am clear about two things: (1) the term ‘sex’ is used primarily to describe the biology of our bodies and the term ‘gender’ is used primarily to describe the attributes that society ascribes to the sex and (2) the world is not, and never has been, binary i.e. black and white. James took us on a whistle-stop tour of the terminology that is currently used to describe the way people feel about themselves. Using evidence from archaeology – focusing on Anglo-Saxon grave contents (James’ speciality) and the Vikings (James’ passion), through art, sociology and literature he then went on to demonstrate that, historically, people have always been fluid in their relationship between sex and gender. In the earliest times it seems that people were actually defined rather in terms of the tasks they fulfilled in their society and only gradually did the concept of a binary ‘male’ ‘female’ world creep into our civilisations. Interestingly I don’t think that the words male or female cropped up at all during the talk.
James enabled questions throughout the talk which gave us all an opportunity to clarify anything we were unclear about and lead naturally into a discussion and some interesting questions following the talk.