President's Blog July 2017

The first month of the new rotary year has flown by and what a busy month we’ve had.

We started off with Lorna and Andrew’s member’s night when we tried out a game known as Quivering Heights, which has been created by Lorna’s friend Peter.  We split into 2 teams, were each given an assortment of plastic shapes/tubes and tasked with building a tower some of which were more successful than others – it was good fun and a good chance to socialise and get acquainted with potential new member Elaine.

Hot on the heels of Quivering Heights four of our members (Caroline, David, Ian and Liz) attended the careers day at St Augustine’s School and carried out mock interviews for the students.  This part of our involvement in the community gives the students an insight to applying for jobs and attending an interview.  We hope that the experience and feedback they are given helps when they enter the job market for real.

There were two main focus points at our committee’s night – first was our forthcoming Canal-side Cream Tea on 5^th August in aid of Polio Plus.  This is a brand new event and we hope it will be successful. The idea came from Tiptree donating jars of Rotary branded purple jam to support the Polio Plus campaign (also supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who match every £1 raised with £2 more).  The other focus point was the Fun Dog Show at the Carnival Country Fayre in September which Julia is masterminding.

On Sunday 16^th President Andrew attended the Trowbridge Civic Service at St James’ Church where the new mayor was welcomed and it gave an opportunity to mingle with the great and the good of Trowbridge.

Our final member’s night of the month (17^th July) was organised by Andy and Ian.  On a pleasant summer evening we ventured out of town to take a look at Ian’s business “Semington Dock”; this included touring the twin dry docks and hearing about how Ian came to establish his business, followed by Ian’s home reared hot dogs and drinks (not terribly tactful considering we were in the vicinity of the next batch of sausages - otherwise known as pigs).  The evening was rounded off by a walk down the road to the Somerset Arms where Ian’s wife Liz was performing with the Hips & Haws Clog Dancers and Devizes Jubilee Morris Dancers, which was very entertaining and we even got persuaded to join in – great fun was had!