Nocton And District WI - report

February meeting

Proving that our WI isn’t just about our monthly meetings the vast majority of the business section related to the various trips, talks and competitions coming up in the next few weeks/months. These include, courtesy of the Witham Group, the Annual scrabble night in April, a talk from Judith Hibbert on Musical Entertainment at the Spring meeting also in April and the opportunity to join the Lindum group for a day trip to Stamford which includes a free morning in the town itself and then an afternoon at Tolethorpe Hall Open Air Theatre to watch “School for Scandal”. The Federation meeting in Skegness in March has Phillipa Langley, of Richard the Third fame, as the main speaker and plans are well underway for our entries in this year’s Lincolnshire show. A date and venue for the March Luncheon club is to be circulated soon and team entries encouraged for the ever popular WI quiz in Metheringham.

On display ready for collection were all of the fabulous mugs decorated at the January “Paint your own Mug” meeting returned to us after firing with many being pleasantly surprised at how well their “works of art” had turned out.

The speaker for the evening brought a welcome return of the highly entertaining and knowledgeable Paul Money who this time brought us “The Wonders of the Universe”. We were blessed with a beautiful dark clear sky so before his talk Paul set up a small telescope and those who were brave enough to face the very cold night were treated to views and information relating to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, the Orion Nebula and Pleiades, more commonly known as the Seven Sisters.

'Orion Nebula' courtesy of www.publicdomainpictures.net

Paul`s talk included amazing slides and mind boggling information about the size, shape and contents of the Universe. Sirius is the brightest star as it is the nearest to us at a mere 8.6 light years away with the Seven Sisters at 400 light years and the Orion Nebula at 11,000. It is thought that there are between 100,000 and 200,000 million stars just in our galaxy , the Milky way, with at least 20 small galaxies around us. One of these, the Andromeda galaxy is moving towards us and within 6-12 billion years is likely to collide with us!

Paul spoke about how and where stars are formed and also how they die, sometimes with massive explosions and sometimes with a sudden collapse. It is also known that our galaxy rotates and that we also rotate within it and some experts now believe that some of the periods of extinction which have happened on earth since its formation are due to how our sun moves and rotates around within the galaxy. As Val stated in her Vote of Thanks to Paul all of these facts and figures are hard to comprehend but do make you realise what a small part of this massive universe we are.

The competition “An Out of this World Cupcake” only brought two entries, one from Maddie and the other from Val. Both were so excellent Paul gave them a joint first prize. The raffle was also won by Maddie.

The programme for next year will be available at the A.G.M. in March and it promises to be a varied and entertaining year for us. The April meeting is a talk from Alison Lark about Andy`s Children’s Hospice followed by an Open meeting in May which brings a talk on and tastings of Horncastle Ales.
Our meetings are always the second Monday of the month, 7,15pm in Nocton Village Hall. Please come along to meet us and see if our WI is for you.

More information is also available on the website at: noctonanddistrictwi.weebly.com

Source: Jane Kania - thankyou