The June meeting was Julie’s first meeting as President, and it was a busy one!

Julie welcomed members, guests and 2 returning members. After singing Jerusalem, our speaker, Emma Toomey, was introduced to us.

Emma talked to us about working as a mounted police officer in London during her 30 years as a Police Officer. Emma told us about her horses over the 30 years, the highs (accompanying the Queen’s coach. Trooping of the Colour), the lows (riots, seeing horses and colleagues injured).

We learnt that horses can get where cars can’t and Emma told us about chasing drug dealers on horseback, helping people in needs and how Emma was able to interact with gangs whilst on horseback.

We enjoyed seeing photos and hearing about Emma’s rapport with her horses. There were lots of questions after this enjoyable and interesting talk.

For the ‘business’ part of the meeting, we were introduced to the committee and found out the roles that they will be undertaking during the coming year.

There were lots of sign -up sheets for events and activities happening.

Tricia won the ‘Competition of the Month’ with her interesting piece of china’. Sadly, we didn’t take a photo of the winning entry or all of the other great entries.

The Quilting Group showed what they had made under Kim’s tutoring.

We did our final collection of toothbrushes and toothpaste as part of our Dental Health Matters campaign. We also did a collection for items for the Honeypot charity and this will continue at our July meeting.

Julie thanked Elaine for running the reception desk, Maureen and April for organising the raffle, Mel and Ruth for doing the refreshments, Sue R for the beautiful table flowers and the committee for setting up the room.

Our next meeting is on Monday 14th July and will be  ‘A Bit of Everything’. At Brockenhurst Village Hall – arrival from 7pm for a 7.30pm start.