Salisbury Shakers June meet-up
Salisbury support group organiser Sheelagh Wurr reflects on the Salisbury Shakers meet-up held on 21st June.
The June meet-up was enjoyable and informative
Our meeting yesterday embraced the concept of Quality over Quantity. There were just five of us – four Shakers and Gillian’s husband David who is so helpful with chairs, carrying coffees and taking photos.
The small number was due in part to people being on holiday, rehearsing for concerts and, I suspect, the hot weather. It was the hottest day of the year, after all.
However, it proved to be an enjoyable and informative meeting.
Sheelagh had had a call from Jasbir Singh providing feedback from a meeting of group leaders which she had been unable to attend. She passed on information from this, including details of a Parliamentary Day to be held in September. There will be a room set aside in the Houses of Parliament in which members of NTF will be able to meet with MPs with the object of raising awareness of ET and the need for research and resources. We are encouraged to write to our MPs to invite them to attend on that day and there is a template letter available.
The four of us at our meeting all have different local MPs and were keen to write.
I will send the template round later as a separate attachment.
Other news from the meeting with Jasbir included the next conference to be held in Newcastle. NTF is asking for ideas as to what should be included. Sadly, those of us present felt that it would be too far to travel on this occasion.
The other main topic was fundraising. The NTF really needs to raise funds and, as members, we need to think of creative ways in which we could do this, as we all live so widely apart. We benefit from the NTF by using their leaflets and fliers and cards, so we need to find a means of contributing.
(We then became a bit silly imagining how we could run a coffee morning. Julie suggested using bone china mugs . . . )
We thought that the best plan would be to produce something we could sell so that we can all sell to our own communities. Caroline, who was unable to be at the meeting had already suggested we produce another book. This might well be worth pursuing. My dear friend who illustrated the ‘Mushy Peas’ book, sadly died last year, so we could really make use of a good cartoonist. Maybe someone on our mailing list has such a talent? Please try and think of some good ideas for fundraising and bring them to the next meeting.
In other news, Andrew told us he had been watching some YouTube videos produced by IETF which stands for the International Essential Tremor Foundation. He found them informative and promised to send some links. I will send these out later when I receive them.
The date of our next meeting is 19th July.
Sheelagh
