President’s Lunch 27 June

This annual event is an important landmark in our Rotary year, when we have the opportunity to express our appreciation of, and thanks to, our partners and, importantly our invited guests – partners of former and much missed members. This year’s event, in the Novotel, was much enjoyed by those present, with excellent company and high-quality food, efficiently served by the always friendly Novotel staff.

After lunch, I concluded  my “music” theme by dispensing with a speaker and instead having a number of musical items as the “entertainment”. We were absolutely delighted to welcome back young flautist Alannah Saphir, accompanied most skilfully by her mother Nichola. Alannah has won a place at the Royal Scottish Conservatoire in Glasgow to continue her musical studies, and it isn’t hard to see why. She gave a wonderful performance of the hauntingly beautiful (but very hard – including the accompaniment!) Concertino by Cecile Chaminade, and also, with minimal rehearsal, accompanied one of the choir pieces most effectively and sensitively. High quality playing, indeed! Click on the image below to see a short video clip of Alannah playing.

Turning to the choir this fine body of singers have been rehearsing hard since early May, and “you did really great, folks!”.  We sang “Fings ain’t what they used to be”, “Come follow me to the greenwood tree” by the 17^th century composer John Hilton (as a 3 part round), “The Wild Mountain Thyme” (with Alannah on flute) and “Summer Holiday” (complete with “ba-doom, ba-dooms”).  A short video of the choir can be watched by clicking on the image below.

The final part of the event was the “Handover”, at which the new President Paul was installed with the Presidential jewel, and various regalia were exchanged for the other officers. It would probably be optimistic to claim that I did that “smoothly”, but I think everyone did eventually get the correct item to wear. I do feel it is important that our wider Rotary family at the event have the opportunity to see the new President installed and offer him their support.

In the handover President Mike reflected on the Rotary year:

I’m reminded of an episode of “Yes Minister” where Jim Hacker was asking Sir Humphrey and Bernard “how am I  doing”, and kept on asking “Am I doing all right?”. Even when told he was doing “all right” he didn’t really believe it and kept asking the same question.

Well, looking back over the year I do feel that on balance I’ve probably done “all right”, but that has been mainly due to all the amazing work and support of many wonderful Rotary colleagues, to whom my very grateful thanks. I couldn’t have done it without you.

Some of the things I hoped to introduce have, I think, gone well – particularly the musical items, not least the wonderful playing of Alannah and many others over the year (as well as today), and including David Powling’s first rate recital at the President’s Dinner. The “Long Standing Members’ talks” have been very successful – many members were amazed to hear of the skills, experience and past activities of a number of colleagues who have been members of the club for many years. Many other things were not innovations but have continued, in my view, from strength to strength – Dragon Boats, Fundraising, distribution of funds to many deserving charities, wide-ranging International support, Physionet and many others. And we’ve also had fun!

We have maintained our valuable German links with Erlangen with the visit of a number of us to Nuremberg last month where we were exceptionally well looked after, as well as an online Halloween Evening with the Germans last October.

We’re delighted to have recruited a good number of new members, but sadly lost some much loved ones, and we remember with great affection at this point Philip Wiltshire, John Russell and Jim Wragg, and a little earlier, David Heasman.

So many people have helped and encouraged me this year and I’m really grateful to each and every one of you, but I’m going to mention just three. Our stalwart secretary Tom whose commitment to the day to day and week to week running of the club is outstanding and our Treasurer Nigel (ably assisted by Tim) for all his careful stewardship of the substantial club funds, despite the pressures of a more than fulltime job. Thirdly, Jan Dash who has had the unenviable task of trying to get the lunch numbers right each week for a considerable number of years, is handing over to Mary Lumley, so many thanks to you, Jan, for a job very well done. Too many others to mention individually, sadly, but thank you all.

So, finally, I do feel that the club is in good heart, and in a strong position to hand over to Paul. I do so with my very best wishes, and absolute certainty that he will be a very much more than an “all right” President!

I do wish President Paul every success in what I’m sure will be an excellent year.

Immediate Past President Mike

Edited and collated by Webmaster David