Club News

May 2013

A Hundred Years of Crosswords by Don Manley

He sets for all the UK broadsheets and is the crossword editor of the Church Times. Crosswords celebrate their centenary this year he celebrates his 50th anniversary of setting crosswords. His pseudonyms - among them Bradman, Duck, Giovanni and Quixote - each relate to the first part of his name,who is it yes it is Don Manley who gave an entertaining and informative presentation to the club on 100 years of crossword puzzles.

He got the bug from his father, He read  the Telegraph, the Express and the Mail. On Sunday afternoon they would solve the Radio Times puzzle together

Don creates his puzzles in his study in Oxford. He likes to start early, at six or seven o'clock, and generally find the morning his most productive time. He writes smart, precise, fair clues, as befits the author of the Chambers Crossword Manual

When asked what makes a good clue he said it has to be grammatically accurate and make some sort of sense. “& lit" clues are often very nice, but so are those with a totally misleading context. Some tease through double meanings in their component parts; some have clever wording and very tricky constructions.

Don stated there are many ways to a successful clue, but every now and again a setter will know when he or she has written one which it would be hard to better.

During the evening Don worked his way through a hundred years of crosswords in ten clues to demonstrate how clues have changed. Have a go at these:-

1913 New York World - To sink in mud (5)

1927 Daily Telegraph - If your doctor is not this, you may be all but the first letter (7)

1936 The Times - It may take a lot out of one (9)

1945 The Observer - Important city of Czechoslovakia (4)

1954 Daily Telegraph - “Lair of Inca ” (anag.) (too far north surely?) (10)

1964 Radio Times - Merry lot bore being tortured for actor (6,6)

1980 Observer Azed prize winner - Marlborough’s second crusher in conclusive quartet of victories (9)

1986 Observer Azed prize-winner - It’s this Littlewoods could make you (4-2-2)

1993 Guardian - Proponent of consciousness providing blacks evoke it (5,4)

2013 Observer Azed prize winner - “Cry for a bit of peace in gaol!” (6)

Saturday the 4th May and the club is on the streets of Woodstock encouraging locals and tourists alike to have their blood pressure tested. 

137 people were checked whilst 10 were referred to their GP for further action - a good days work.

April 2013

Chipping Norton Rotarian Simon Hamilton visited on 22nd April to tell us about his flying career. He is now at CAE Oxford Aviation Academy but first took to the skies in the RAF. Born in the Channel Isles, Simon, like most RAF trainees, started flying in a Hunting Jet Provost. He soon discovered, however, that he didn’t have all the attributes to become a fighter pilot so had to settle with becoming a “multi-engine” pilot instead.

One of his fondest memories was flying an Avro Vulcan B2 bomber to Cyprus in 1974, the year that Turkey invaded the island. After his spell in Cyprus Simon moved on to a Handley Page Victor to undertake air to air re-fuelling operations and he told us about the intricacies of shifting thousands of gallons of aviation fuel in mid-air.

In 1989 he moved to RAF Cranwell to join the Central Flying School as an instructor where he helped train many of today’s experienced pilots. Three years later he moved back to tanker re-fuelling first as a controller planning operational deployment and then becoming a VC10 Captain at Brize Norton. 

In 2006 he left the RAF to join the Oxford Aviation Academy as a multi-pilot flight instructor. He is now Deputy Manager at CAE responsible for overseeing flight simulator training once budding pilots have done their basic flying hours and the multi-crew cooperation courses. Simon gave us a run-down on all the stages pilots must go through before taking on employment. Interestingly they do most of their early flying sessions at CAE’s base in Phoenix, Arizona. Why there? Because the weather conditions guarantee many more clear flying hours per year than in murky Oxfordshire.

A sobering thought: next time we get to fly on our holidays it could be a fresh-faced pilot on his very first commercial take-off....... they have to start somewhere! Simon has been invited back to tell us more about flying every boys dream, the famous Vulcan bomber.

March 2013

A TOUR OF THE HOLY LAND - Rev Adrian Daffern

We witnessed a miracle as the Reverend Adrian Daffern took the club on a trip through the Holy Land using 160 photographs all in 30 minutes!

You may think that a powerpoint presentation of this number of slides would be a feat of endurance for his audience but nothing could be further from the truth. Adrian held our attention throughout as he gave us his personal views of the sites he had visited and the impact they had on him. His feelings ranged from hairs standing up on the back of his neck and tears to the occasional sadness at the way some holy sites were presented. Throughout the presentation Adrian's humour and enthusiasm was a delight and ensured the the evening was both educational and very enjoyable.

Youth Speaks 2013 - Oxford teams reach the final!

Both our Youth Speaks teams have now won through three further rounds and are now in the National final which will be on Sunday 28th April at Hull University with 8 teams competing in each of the Intermediate & Senior sections.

Each winning team will receive the RIBI Challenge Trophy which they hold for the year. Winners, 2nd & 3rd place team members also receive individual awards.

I think that this is a "first" that even one “Oxford” team has got that far, let alone both of them! Good Luck to d'Overbroeck's College and The Oratory.

February 2013

Rotary Scholars with Lady Henrietta Spencer-Churchill enjoying tea in the Indian Room at Blenheim Palace.

January 2013

Intermediate Youth Speaks in Pictures

2013 Winners d'Overbroeck's College

December  2012

Father Christmas visits Kidlington and Woodstock

Collecting for Local Charities

November 2012

October 2012

September 2012

August 2012

Select "2012 Rotary Blenheim 10 information link" from links on the left for more information and access to the run website.

July 2012

June 2012

We meet at the Kings Head, Woodstock, on Monday evenings for a varied programme of speakers (mostly entertaining!), fun and fellowship. We have men and women members from all sorts of backgrounds and our geographical region covers many villages around Kidlington and Woodstock.