Oxford celebrates turning on its Christmas lights with an evening of activities at various venues, one of those being Wesley Memorial Church,
We started the evening in the Sanctuary – the main part of the church, where we chatted amongst ourselves and with church people and members of the public. We also ate Pizza, Stollen and Mince Pies. Amongst other activities one of church member was drawing caricatures of people, including some of our members.
We then moved through to the hall, and worked off some of the pizza with some hockey and boccia.
Like last year, our Annual General meeting was hybrid, with the physical part of the meeting at Wesley Memorial Church. As Covid is still with us, having an online connection allowed members who could not come in person, through testing positive or other reasons, to join in. Using automatically generated subtitles allowed the chair and club co-ordinator’s words to be displayed, although some BSL signing was still needed.
Our AGMs are fairly routine, we approved the minutes from last year’s AGM, our treasurer presented the accounts, and our chair presented her annual report.
We did not present the Roy Lewis award at the AGM, but hope to do so at the Christmas dinner, which we are all looking forward to.
The Reverend Peter Powers, minister at Wesley Memorial Church, is a man of many talents, including drumming. He brought a selection of drums, mainly djembes, with him and we had a great evening, learning about the drums make different sounds depending on where and how they are hit, and then jamming along to make music ourselves !
It was an activity everyone could participate in, and revealed some unexpected talents and enthusiasms in out members. We look forward to Peter’s return for another session !
We have a tradition of playing Bingo in the run up to Easter, where our members bring Easter Eggs and other goodies, and then we play Bingo – the prizes being the treats that we have brought.
Easter Bingo Prizes
Once again Tom kindly volunteered to be our caller, his good humour and patience when we lose our place making the evening enjoyable for everyone.
Tom, at the controls of our Bingo machine
As if Bingo was not enough for one evening, we had a craft session too !
We were making butterflies to be used as decoration for the Purple Extravaganza – a Fun and Fundraising Ball being hosted by Harlow Phab, to raise money for the Kelly Jackson Memorial Fund. Kelly was an active member of Oxford Phab for many years, who liked purple and butterflies, and her presence is missed.
Oxford Phab have been involved for several years in helping with the fundraising for the Wesley Memorial Church Open Doors building project. We were very happy to have a presence at the opening event.
Sonia Hicks, the President of the Methodist Conference officially opened the new Atrium and were stalls from several of the groups who use the premises, including Phab.
We also performed a signed song, ‘I wish I knew how it would feel to be free‘, boosted by church members, and enjoyed the performances by other groups connected with the church. There was also food ! It was great opportunity to mingle with other church users, and we look forward to continuing to enjoy the use of the refurbished buildings.
In a return to tradition we celebrated the approach of Shrove Tuesday with delicious pancakes, and a variety of favourite toppings.
Although opinions may differ about the best topping for a pancake, a wide variety were available, lemon, sugar, bananas, whipped cream, chocolate sauces and so on. Several members bring their own contributions to make sure that their own choice will be available, and there was plenty to go round.
Unfortunately the Covid pandemic meant that we could not celebrate Kathryn being nominated for the Paul Hope award with trip to a ceremony in London, as we did for Simon’s nomination, but a presentation at Wesley Memorial meant that more people could enjoy the occasion, particularly Tom.
Fitting in with an activity that Wesley Memorial Church has been doing, we made sculptures of of bread dough. These could be of people we found inspiring – our ‘roll models’, or anything we liked.
Due to rising Covid numbers this was our last face-to-face meeting of the year. Members were asked to take a lateral flow test before coming, to wear masks, and socially distance from people not in the same family group.
Despite the difficult circumstances those who were able, or safe, to get to Wesley Memorial had an enjoyable evening.
Having not met in our normal meeting place at Wesley Memorial Church in the centre for Oxford since March 2020, and having had our AGM last year via Zoom, it was great to be able to hold this year’s AGM as our first ever hybrid meeting.
This enabled some members who would otherwise have had to travel some distance, and those who are shielding to participate.
Each year at our Annual General Meeting we award the Roy Lewis Trophy to someone who has inspired us by their actions and contribution to our club. The past year has been difficult for so many people but our members chose to award trophies this year to three people who have stayed strong and positive in adversity. Their bravery through sadness and difficulty has been an inspiration to us all. We send our love to Trisha, Melissa and Katherine.
Roy Lewis Awards
We also had physical confirmation of the results of our sponsored walk to raise money for Toilet Twinning, and were able to show off the certificates.
We raised enough to twin both accessible toilets and four taps at the church.
As well as the usual AGM business of elections, accounts etc it was an opportunity for members to see the new church atrium, with its automatic doors.
It has been a long wait for Wesley Memorial Open Doors building project to reach this stage, but the results are beautiful. They are also much more accessible. At the far end of the space between the church on the left and the John Wesley Room on the right, before the atrium was built, roughly where the wooden desk is, there was the door into the building. It was installed before accessibility was an issue, and so opened outwards, as fire escape doors should do, and had a door closer to prevent it staying open, to conserve energy. It was also at the top of quite a short steep slope, which has been converted into the gentle unnoticeable slope of the atrium. The combination of these factors meant that entering the premises in a wheelchair, even for someone who was normally independent, required three people, one entering, one holding the door and one pushing.
All the fundraising Oxford Phab did to help support the Open Doors project has been most worthwhile.
September 2019
March 2019
March 2017
March 2016
Oxford Phab Serving refreshments in aid of Open Doors
Tom’s wide range of questions reflected his wide range of interests, as well as the interests of club members. We played in teams, which was lucky, as the chances of a single individual (apart, presumably from Tom) being able to recognise, in the picture round, scenes from Paw Patrol and Gone with the Wind, were pretty slim.
