Plymouth Coeliac Group

This Saturday (13th April) is the AGM for the Plymouth Voluntary Support Group for Coeliac UK.  The meeting will take place at The Woolwell Centre, Darklake Lane, Woolwell, PL6 7TR.  The meeting will start at 2pm.  Easy and free parking is available, and there is a £1 voluntary entrance fee.  There will be a talk by Coeliac UK Dietitian Kathryn Miller, and friend of Gluten Free by the Sea Lisa Hackett will also be present selling her delicious Let Them Eat Cake gluten and dairy free treats.

This is a particularly important meeting, as this is a pivotal time for the Plymouth Group.  Group Organiser Alice Williams and Database Administrator Vivien Johnson are stepping down after years of great service to the group.  Treasurer Harry Booth will also be stepping down.  I’d like to personally thank them for their service.  What this means is for the group to continue in its current form we must find at least three volunteers to fill the roles.  The group organiser role could potentially be split between more than one person.

I have volunteered to take over from Vivien as the Database Administrator, and I hope that we can find at least two other volunteers to fill the Organiser and Treasurer roles.  I would really like to see the group survive, and I hope that someone will be able to step up to work alongside me to make this happen.  This is an opportunity to inject new blood and push the group in a new direction after the great work done by Alice and Vivien in recent years.  If you are interested, see contact details for Alice below, or contact me directly.

For further information, please see communication from Alice below.

Kevin, Gluten Free by the Sea

Dear Member,

Once the business is over there will be tea/coffee/juice and biscuits provided for you.There will be a raffle with a maximum of 10 prizes but please note. . . . WE ARE NOT HAVING OUR USUAL BRING AND SHARE TEA.

Please bring your spare gluten-free prescription goods which are still in date for new members to try out.Let Them Eat Cake (run by Lisa Hackett) will be attending with her delicious variety of sweet and savoury vegetable based food for sale.

Further details: As you know I am standing down as group organiser at the AGM and I’m hoping that there will be someone out there who will take this on perhaps sharing the jobs with another. As a committee we haven’t necessarily filled all the posts that we could have had, due to a lack of members coming forward to offer their help. The good news is that Kevin Gollop will replace Vivien Johnson who has run the data-base for many years. He has also kindly offered to take on the Restaurant etc. list and to keep our page on the Coeliac UK website updated. You may already have looked at his blog http://gfreebythesea.me which was mentioned in the recent Spring Crossed Grain p.51. Harry Booth our Treasurer would also like to step down.

For the group to carry on it is vital that we find at least 2 more replacements. If not then the group is suspended and gets administered by Coeliac UK. After about 6 mths they contact all the Plymouth group area members to see if there is enough interest to restart the group and that means enough members prepared to volunteer their time to enable that to happen. It would be sad to see the past efforts of the group go to waste. So to save Coeliac UK the extra administrative work. . . .WHY NOT VOLUNTEER YOURSELF? It needn’t be for very long but it could enable the group to continue in the meantime.

• Dates coming up are – Awareness Week 13 – 19th May – possible Information Stall at Sainsbury’s Marsh Mills Next new members on Sat in late June also at Sainsbury’s Marsh Mills Sat. Sept. 7th Food Fair run by Torbay Group 10am-4pm at English Riviera Centre Torquay
• Finances after the last meeting continue to be good despite having to pay for the hall. The Woolwell Centre will be half the price by the way but when the committee met recently it was felt that we should return to the Postgraduate Medical Centre in the autumn to try out what it is like now that there is no parking available nearby. Unfortunately they were booked up for this meeting in April. So there is £416 (approx.) in the bank, and £147 was raised at the last meeting with outgoings of £235. Since then Vivien and I have reduced the numbers being contacted by the group so our postage and printing costs will be much less ie.down from 270 to 70. If you do not have access to a computer and emails, perhaps you have family, friends or a neighbour who would be happy to receive them and pass them on to you. As a group we are not able to pass on as much information to those members who can only use the postal route.

So I hope to see you on the 13th and on a lighter note, shall sit by my phone waiting for that all important call to say that you can help the group continue by volunteering some of your time! Thanks to the support of the other committee members and their dedicated imput, I have enjoyed my 4 years as group organiser. It’s been very worthwhile getting the new members meetings going and also the famous Restaurant list which has grown from 43 entries to what it is today thanks to all you members who pass on information to me.

Alice Williams, Court House, The Crescent, Crapstone, PL20 7PS 01822 859269 coeliac.plymouth@gmail.com

Group Organiser, Plymouth Voluntary Support Group for Coeliac UK