Newsletter 308 - January 2019

Rotary Club of Stranraer

Monthly Newsletter No 308

 January 2019

Service above self

Best wishes to all for a healthy and happy New Year

Meetings – unless otherwise advised

1^st and 3^rd Monday of month – 1pm

2^nd & 4^th Monday of month – 6pm

CONGRATULATIONS

Congratulations to Hew Chalmers who has been awarded an MBE for ' services to Olympic sport'!

Imminent Activities

7^th Jan – Fellowship

14^th Jan – evening – Chris Brewis will give his autobiographical talk.

21^st Jan – Annual Primary Schools Pupils’ Lunch. Our speaker is Adam Gray, former rugby coach and Performance Development Manager at the Scottish Rugby Union and presently a member of its governing Council. His talk should be very relevant to the young people as well as to members.

28^th Jan – evening – Kenny Kirkpatrick, Group Leader at West Freugh, will be speaking

Dates for your Diary  

25^th Feb 2019 – Our speakers will be from the Macmillan team reviewing cancer care in D & G. They will be explaining about the review and are keen to have our local input. We would welcome the attendance of family members and friends who have been affected by cancer – either for the meal and meeting or for the meeting alone.

1st June 2019 - Mull of Galloway Trail Marathon and Half Marathon.

7^th to 15^th July 2019 – Skiffe World Championship in Loch Ryan

17^th May 2019 – Annual Christian Aid Lunch

Recent Events   

Mon 3^rd Dec – 1pm – S.G.M. It was confirmed that Neil Fraser will take over as President in July.

Mon 10^th Dec – 6pm – Gregor Henry told us about his work as a Rugby Development Officer for Wigtownshire Rugby Club. He is responsible for the development of rugby in Stranraer Academy and its 12 feeder Primary schools. He is an excellent role model for the young people – both boys and girls.

15^th & 16^th December – Christmas collection – see below

Mon 17^th Dec – 12.00 for 12.30pm – Our annual Christmas Lunch was well attended.

Mon 24^th & Mon 31^st – no meetings

Poppy Collection – just short of £4,000!

Further to last month’s report, I am pleased to advise that we have received a letter and certificate from The Scottish Poppy Appeal 2018 advising the amount collected was slightly higher than thought at £3,986.43. Well done to all those involved!

Christmas collection

Our Saturday street collection, as well as various other activities which had been arranged in the town centre, had to be cancelled because of extremely poor weather. Even if members had ventured out into the storm its unlikely that there would have many of the public around. The Sunday collection in Morrisons went ahead and raised £515.26 which will be topped up from our Charity funds.

Thanks to all involved including Morrisons and the public for their generosity.

Visit by Canadian Curlers – contributed by Ian McIntyre

The Canadian tourists arrived in Scotland to compete for the Bob McIntosh Quaich on the 27th of October via Iceland where they had to change planes after there was a technical fault on the original plane Because they were the last plane to leave all the baggage handlers had left to go home and had to be recalled to the airport to unload the faulty plane and load the new one

After that start they fairly waltzed through Scotland and having curled in Paisley, Stirling, Perth, Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee, Kinross, Edinburgh and Dumfries arrived in Stranraer on the 17th of November 60 shots up in the competition We reduced that lead to 46.

The party was 22 strong so eight stayed in Stranraer on the Saturday and Sunday nights and the rest in Ayr. The hosts in Stranraer were John Munro, Donald McColm Roger Johnson, Alistair McWilliam, Neville Wright, Ian McIntyre and Hugh Parker.  A big thank you to all the hosts and wives and especially to Hugh and Maureen who laid on a party for the tourists and their hosts on Saturday night. Unfortunately Hugh's generous hosting seemed to affect the Scots more than the Canadians and we were well beaten in Ayr on the Sunday!

On the Monday, Neville, Ian and Hugh ran our guests up to Hamilton for the next part of their journey. Before they left Stranraer Gail Munro kindly asked the Canadians if they would like to see her collection of curling memorabilia and what a collection. It is well worth a visit. On the way up, we stopped off in Mauchline at Kays where they turn Ailsa Craig granite into curling stones

A big thank you to Hugh who was the area organiser and to all the hosts who gave up their time to give our fellow Rotarians memories that will last them a lifetime If anybody fancies a trip to Canada in two years get in touch with Hugh.

Needless to say, the Canadians took the trophy home with them.

Community Service Award

We are looking for nominations for this Award.

New members

We are keen to recruit new members. Please advise Gary Small of any suitable candidates.

Rugby                

Our group of supporters and friends make good use of their season tickets to watch Glasgow Warriors. All of our group of 10 renewed their season tickets and were joined by 2 new supporters bringing us up to 12. 

They make their tickets available to Club members for individual matches which they themselves are unable to attend.   In particular 2 of our supporters are unavailable for quite a few matches as they are working for spells in the Middle East. It is essential that Tom Mitchell is contacted at an early stage before spares are offered to others.

Contact Tom Mitchell if you are interested in attending any match..

Websites 

 Roger Johnson continues to manage our site.  

http://rotary-ribi.org/clubs/homepage.php?ClubID=1383  

Tom Stevenson continues to look after the Mull of Galloway Trail site.

http://www.mullofgallowaytrail.co.uk/  

Tom has also ensured that the MGT is listed among Scotland’s Great trails

http://www.scotlandsgreattrails.com/

We are on Facebook with 21 members.

It would be appreciated if members who use Facebook would join the group and forward any new content to their friends thus helping our public profile.

Press Officer

Members should get in touch with Tom Mitchell, in his role as Press Officer, if they have anything they wish included in the Newsletter or reported in the press. He particularly wishes photographs for publication and/or Club archives.  

We have articles in the Free Press and in our District Magazine on a regular basis.

New Year humour–

·         What happened to the man who shoplifted a calendar on New Year's Eve? He got 12 months!