Still Zoom But We Hope To Meet Up Again in Sweden

Our international fellowship has been stretched physically by the pandemic.  We have missed meeting our friends face to face around a table.

But we can all still meet round a table, albeit virtual, as we proved on Tuesday November 23, 2021 when we met all our friends in the “Double Triangular” group of Rotary Clubs, all at the initiative of Philippe Tricetti from the Rotary Club of Beausoleil, together with other members of his club; members from Basildon, Alba, Ovada, and Karlshamn.   We were represented by Peter Greene, Malcolm Acors and Brian Wellman.

Twenty-one of us in all, conducted over Zoom. (So what’s new?)  It was clear how much we all appreciated the opportunity to “meet” with members from our sister clubs after such a long break.  Short agenda and a time limit of one hour.  First was a welcome from Philippe and an introduction of the other members from Beausoleil. Then each club took it in turn to update the others on what news they had of their activities since we all last met.

Future Fears?

Common threads were our use of Zoom to so successfully keep all our clubs managing through the pandemic and most importantly, still doing good work for our communities.  Most were now meeting face-to-face but many of our continental friends were wary that a lockdown or other restrictions could end this and force a return to Zoom in the future.

The final session was a presentation by the Rotary Club of Karlshamn.  The last double triangular reunion was planned to be in 2020 in Karlshamn, but this was (rightly) postponed until 2021 and even this date was not viable because of Covid and has now been rescheduled to September 8-11, 2022.  Karlshamn have formed a project team to plan the visit comprising Lars, Camille, Sabine, Bengt, Steen and Pia, a strengthening of the 2020 team by two additional people.  Members are hard at work producing a plan for the visit, and a formal invitation will be issued to all clubs in January.

Book Quickly

As a result of the pandemic, everybody is “stir crazy” and looking to make visits and stay in hotels, so we need to be quick to identify how many visitors can be expected so that necessary bookings can be made.  All clubs were asked to identify potential numbers as soon as possible.

The meeting ended with best wishes between all present.  Our grateful thanks to Philippe for arranging this Zoom meeting.