I was still buzzing from the incredible inauguration ceremony the night before, when I arrived that morning for the LCI AGM.

I was accompanied by two Tangent members who had been to several previous LCIs - I was constantly whispering questions to them …’who is she’, ‘why are they sat on the stage’, ‘what does that mean’ and so on as the AGM progressed.

Looking around at all the delegates, it was a delight to see everyone dressed up for the occasion and at last I didn’t feel over dressed wearing ‘Henry’.

Being this year’s GB&I winner of the Nordic Hat Award, Henry had already been out on the half day tour and inauguration ceremony much to the bemusement of the other circlers. I was surprised, but delighted that many countries were still identifiable as a group by their outfits (skirts, sashes, hats, ribbons etc).

It was a shame that us Brits, beautifully decked as we were, had just done our own thing for the AGM itself and no longer looked like a group. Already my mind was pondering on how we could fix that for next year … yes I was already hooked by the LCI conference bug!

There were five past presidents of LCI present at the AGM, with 21 member countries and seven associate member countries all represented.  I had to stand and be recognised as a ‘conference virgin’ and I was surprised at how many other circlers stood with me: we were obviously all lured by the magic of India and Fiesta @ 50.

There were many interesting presentations during the day, but the highlight for me was Chris Wright’s presentation on the SARIS project.

As my circle had managed to raise over £1000 for SARIS, and having been present at the Toilet Block Opening the day before, I was keen to see how well we had done on an international level.  Chris, very deservedly, received a standing ovation from the delegates.

At tea-break it was another opportunity to ‘swap pins’. This was a brand new concept to me, as at the past four GB&I National AGMs that I had attended we have not been encouraged to do this. But by now in India I was getting into the swing of it, together with having my photo taken with lots of lovely ladies.

We also got chance at tea-break to check out every ones ‘storyboards’ and sign those belonging to friends we had just made. It was fun reading what people had been up to and I was a little disappointed that mine didn’t even say where I was from let alone all the captions I had sent along with my photos.

After tea-break we were treated to dancing by the ladies from Bruges to promote next years LCI conference and their theme of Chocolate; this was quickly followed by the ladies of Hamburg demonstrating some ‘knot tying’ to promote LCI 2011.

After the AGM had finished we proceeded to the Ballroom for lunch. This was an exciting feast of Southern Indian cuisine in the form of a Thali (a large metal plate covered with a banana leaf).

Servers constantly passed by placing tasty morsels of food on our plates for us to try. It was the perfect end to my first (but definitely not my last) LCI conference.

Julie Roberts
Reading Circle 128 Chairman
Area 13 Treasurer