Village Voice by Rosie Warrillow, 14th June

Last week I had the great pleasure to travel up to Bournemouth to represent our Link Group of the WI at the National conference. It was a lovely trip and our driver for the couple of days, Bob, was very kind and helpful and the coach was new and comfortable. On the way to Bournemouth we stopped at the beautiful Athelhampton Manor which dated from the Elizabethan era. The house had been saved from disrepair by Alfred Cart de Lafontaine, a French merchant in the 1890’s. He carefully and very dedicatedly restored the house and gardens to their former glory, filling it with treasures from all over the world. Sadly he lost his money due to bad investments and had to return to France, but years later he was buried in the local churchyard at Puddletown. Once again the house was in danger of being run down and lost forever until the Carr family rescued it in the 1940’s. It became a centre for the arts in the 1950-1960s and a very famous Russian lady artist, Morvena, had friends from all over Europe who visited, and she painted some wonderful paintings in the Cubist style. The house is truly magnificent with a lot of these art works on display in the family wing. The house is once more up for sale with the price of £7.5 million, hopefully the collection will stay intact.

The journey continued to Bournemouth and a total of 6000 women from all over the country took  their seats for the conference. The lady chair gave a stirring and humourous opening speech and the speaker, Sir Keith Bradley spoke on previous WI resolutions which aimed to improve on the treatment of mentally ill people who find themselves falling foul of the justice system, and trying to provide alternative places of safety when the only option can be a police or prison cell. The resolutions were passed in 2008 – Sir Keith has worked hard and achieved some remarkable progress over the last ten years. This year’s resolutions were to support rural bus services and to promote and improve the uptake of Cervical Smear tests which have shown a remarkable slump in numbers of tests being taken. It was also recommended the age for screening be increased as it’s been shown that women over 64, the upper age limit for testing, are still vulnerable to the disease. Both these resolutions were passed, and will be acted upon in the future.

Our WI here in AG would like to invite new members to come and join in. They go on trips several times a year and the monthly meetings take place on the second Thursday of each month. Why not come as a guest? You would be more than welcome!                                                                                 

Our Cricket Team are still battling on after last weeks rainy day, and their next match will be on Tuesday June 25^th at Yealmpton starting at 6pm, if you wish to follow our gallant boys efforts.                                                                                                                                                        Clare from Breathe Fitness is running some classes at the village hall on Thursday  from 7.30pm-8.30pm, for more information please see the village website and facebook pages.                                            

This months Magpie contains a schedule for this years village show. There are all sorts of different classes for fruit and veg, and some for crafts and artworks too. Please support our local show. Thanks again to Maggie and Jenny for organising this popular event. More schedules are available from the village shop.There will be a special section for our children to get involved too.                                          

It’s only a few weeks until this years Swoosh event, and there is still time to sponsor our special swimmers to help support the communtiy pool and youth projects. You can do so on the Facebooks Just Giving links.