We were pleased to welcome Tiverton Mayor Susie Griggs to our July meeting, and are delighted that she has agreed to be an honorary member of our club over the next year. Our mayor, Susie Griggs, gave us an interesting talk on her role as Mayor during our Zoom meeting in July. The very first mayor, John Diamond, was elected in 1620 but the Town Hall wasn’t built until 1864. Mayor  Susie chairs the monthly council meetings which are open to everyone, which was news to some of our members. If a resident is unable to attend an email would suffice and would be read and responded to as appropriate. Another piece of fascinating news was that Tiverton gave Freedom of the Town to HMS Enterprise. Susie has been aboard, even experiencing a very short time at the helm (without incident!). There is much Susie

Here’s the link to a video from our Region, celebrating Membership Month https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3dvxEuV3Ds

This lovely brightly-coloured children’s bedding has been donated to The North Devon Against Domestic Abuse refuge by Daphne, one of our members. https://www.ndada.co.uk/our-refuge/

Several Soroptimists, friends and partners enjoyed a wonderful visit to Bickleigh Castle in glorious sunshine. We saw many of the castle’s historic rooms, the chapel which is one of the oldest buildings in Devon still used for its original purpose, walked in the grounds and finished with a cream tea in the sun room.  

Ian started by relating his career path from banker to prison officer to prison governor of four prisons in the Scottish prison service. Despite his many years of service, not once did Ian come across a cyber criminal in his prisons – cyber crime is a new and growing form of criminal activity that has got considerably worse during the pandemic; in fact, something changes more or less every day in the world of cyber-crime, meaning that Ian has to regularly update his presentation. Cyber-crime is the fastest-growing crime in the world, costing the world economy $2.9 million / minute. The real figure could be higher as many companies don’t report it. The 5 kinds of cyber-crime are phishing, website-spoofing, malware, ransomware and IOT hacking. Phishing makes up 95% of cyber-crime. Website-spoofing is when a site is set up that closely-resembles a trusted brand. Always

On a beautiful spring evening we welcomed Jess, Head Gardener of Knightshayes, the National Trust property on the edge of Tiverton and popular visitor attraction for locals and tourists alike.  This stately home was built by John Heathcoat who travelled south with his lace-making machine in 1816, made his fortune and brought rewarding work to our town through a factory that is still flourishing, even making the lace for Princess Diana’s wedding veil. https://www.heathcoat.co.uk/ Jess was a fount of knowledge about the horticulturally significant garden on our doorstep.  She works mainly in the beautiful woodland garden, but has also worked in the walled garden which was restored just under 20 years ago after having been allowed to go to lawn for many years.  An account of how “green manure” is being used to help improve soil quality and help the vegetables thrive can be found

Through the wonders of modern technology, we were able to meet up with some of the members of our Friendship Link club, SI Gouda. It was great to have a catch-up and a lovely surprise for our club to welcome Di, a former member, to our meeting. We discussed the projects our two clubs have been involved with, despite ongoing lockdowns in both The Netherlands and the UK.  We were interested to learn about the Gouda club’s overseas project, which aims to enable girls in Pakistan to avoid child marriage, by helping them have access to education. Both clubs are participating in the Soroptimist International tree planting project to celebrate 100 years of Soroptimism (2020 was our centenary). http://www.soroptimisteurope.org/100-years-soroptimist-international-a-bright-past-a-brilliant-future/  

Following a cheque for £50 sent to St Petrock’s, our club has received this lovely letter: ‘Your kindness will help us make a lasting difference in the lives of local people without a home; we greatly appreciate your support in these challenging times…..Our newly mobile rough sleeper support team are out each weekday morning…they are distributing sleeper rough packs en route……..our full range of basic survival services (clothing, laundry facilities, phone charging,showers, toiletries, sleeping bags, phone and computer access) remain available at St Petrock’s centre. ‘ St Petrock’s, alongside frontline housing and homelessness services, also offers a specialist welfare rights service, and health and well-being services, including a mental health clinic. Like many other charities they have had to work hard to adapt their services during these very challenging times. Find out more: http://stpetrocks.org.uk/

It’s great to raise awareness of our wonderful charities (and have our fundraising work recognised). Thank you to The Mid Devon Gazette. And just in case you missed this on our Facebook or Twitter feed:

This was the title of our February talk from member, Grace Jones – the picture gives a good “feel” of the talk! Grace began her talk with a startling account of experimental work at NASA some decades ago, designed to help astronauts get used to gravity-free environments and which established the capacity of the brain to adapt to changed visual input and to make new neural connections within just 26 to 30 days. This remarkable facility is due to neuroplasticity in the brain. With repetition, mental muscle is built up and new neural pathways become established. Our brains are rather like icebergs, explained Grace, with the conscious part above the surface and a much larger, subconscious part below the water. The habits we have live within the subconscious part of the brain and are automatic things, many originating from our upbringing. She went on to