Pewsham Belles and guests packed out the Community Centre for our first meeting of 2018 and were treated to a host of tales - both funny and thought provoking - from Dorothy Cook and her 30+ years as a midwife. We had our eyes opened to the true impact of female genital mutilation on both mother and baby as well as hearing her more entertaining and amusing stories from around the world. Dorothy also revealed she has never had a baby named after her, yet her daughter one year in as a midwife can already count three. We thoroughly recommend Dorothy as speaker! We're forming a new bring and share supper group which will meet once a quarter. The idea is we'll take it in turns to host and for everyone to select and bring one dish from a cookbook chosen by the host. Fiona Plant is kicking things off on March 3rd. The cookbook is to be decided and it's likely there'll be a preliminary meeting for everyone to choose which dish they're going to bring. The Crafty Crew got busy in January making baby hats for the RUH appeal, plus tiny hats for Innocent's Big Knit Campaign, helped along by other members of Pewsham Belles. Their aim is to donate at least 50 hats, which represents 1% needed by the RUH each year. With the Big Knit, Innocent will donate 25p per hat to Age UK's varied loneliness projects; a great tie-in with one of this year's key WI campaigns. The Secret Lives of Bees was well received by the Book Club and the Our Town group enjoyed the first memories of Chippenham everyone shared at their meeting. It's amazing how much Chippenham has changed, even recently. Last but not least, April had a blast making patisserie at Denman!