Club Blog June 2015

The 1st June was an allocated member organised activity evening, but sometimes the best laid plans fall apart, so we just met up at the Lamb for a drink and a chat. A broad range of topics were covered, lots of laughs, sometimes it is good just to be able to chat.

On Saturday 6th June, at the parkrun briefing, rtn Vicky Ody presented a cheque for the £250 raised at our April Pub Quiz Night, our contribution towards the Southwick Country Park defibrillator. Thank you again to everyone who took part in the quiz, with your efforts along with other fundraising, the park has now reached total amount needed to purchase the defibrillator. Of course we very much hope that it will not be necessary for the defibrillator to be used.

With the Rotary year coming to an end and President Ann's holiday looming we had a re-jig of our calendar and Ann very kindly invited all our members to her home on 8th June to say thank you for all our support throughout the year. She provided a delicious BBQ & drinks, a dry evening, and even a couple of visits from a stealth bomber circling above! Thank you Ann, it was a lovely evening.

On 17th June the Trowbridge in Bloom 'Little Bloomers' public speaking competition took place at the Town Hall. Rtn Caroline Christopher along with Trowbridge Lions Rick Jotcham & Dorothy House Wendy Sawyers had the very difficult job of judging the 15 pupils from 5 Trowbridge Primary Schools. Each year 6 student was given 2 minutes to talk on the following subject:

"If you were given an acre of land at your school to produce healthy food to cook and eat, what would you grow, and what 3 healthy dishes would you make from the school grown food?"

1st place was awarded to the Mead Community Primary School, but many congratulations to all the students who took part.

It was a busy couple of days for rtn Caroline and TiB as the next morning she was back at the Town Hall, this time to judge The Hidden World Exhibition. 20 students from the 90 Credit Diploma Art & Design Wiltshire College course produced varied and interesting exhibits based on one of three themes set by TiB:

1. Hidden Places: Celebrate the beauty & mystery of secret natural places

2. Organic Forms: Selecting from a primary basis such as plants, flowers, seed heads, shells, pebbles or rocks

3. Miniature Plant Pot Garden

The exhibition was open to the public for 4 days so we do hope many of you were able to see it. All the students should be very proud of their work and the top place three will receive their awards at the TiB presentation evening in September.

The 22nd June was a lovely summers evening and TWM were out & about. Rtn Andrea Barlow arranged for us to visit the Michael Blake Racing Stables at Staverton, and Mike gave us a very interesting talk and tour of his facilities. We met some of his handsome horses and he even gave us a couple of tips for his horses running at the forthcoming weekend races - what a shame none of us took a punt, we would have made a few quid!

Chippenham Rotary timed their Pimm's Afternoon Tea Party well. it was a glorious afternoon on Saturday 27th and 3 of our members had a delightful afternoon at Kington St Michael drinking Pimms, eating delicious sandwiches & cakes and chatting in the sunshine. The afternoon was very successful and managed to raise an impressive £615 for ophthalmic equipment in sub-Saharan Africa.

Our final meeting in June was also our final meeting in this Rotary year, time for President Ann Jones to hand over office to incoming President Julia Davey and for President Julia to then appoint her club officers for the 2015-16 Rotary year. Thank you Ann for all your hard work on behalf of our club this year, and good luck Julia, we hope you enjoy the challenges 2015-16 will bring!