Bristol Conference 2014 Day 4 - Gala

Saturday began, as did the day before, with a team meeting in the Executive Dining Room. Once again Mike Thorn led us through the priorities for the day, and any problems were discussed. One particular problem was highlighted, in that people were objecting to only having one programme per couple. They didn’t mind sharing a bag, but sharing a programme was a step too far. Couples often did different things during the weekend, so were not together all the time. They nevertheless wanted to know what was on and when.  It was decided that our policy of one programme per couple had been a mistake which would be rectified immediately the registration desk opened.  With regard to the Gala Dinner that evening, it was decided, for reasons I’m not entirely clear about, that there would be no grace said beforehand, and no loyal toast, just the Rotary toast at the end of dinner.

                                       The Conference programme

The Conference was to be under  way at 9.00 a.m. and with almost all delegates having by now arrived, we were anticipating a busy session. The DG was to deliver her keynote speech at the commencement of the session, which her two sisters and their husbands would be present for. Seats had been reserved for me, Sharon, Tony, Lynne and Richard in the front row, and alongside me would be the DG’s guest Les Wilson and his host Neil Rorie from Rushmoor club. Alongside him were Helena  and Ron Daniels with Jens Erik and Cornelia. The DG’s other guest Ken Billington was busy on his Trade Aid stand in the Rotary Showcase, and would be speaking later.

                                                Ron Daniels looks after Jens Erik and Cornelia

                                Waiting for the show to begin - Lynne, Richard, Tony and Sharon

                               The DG practises her speech on Tony, who looks spellbound

There was a 10 minute delay as delegates were only slowly drifting in to take their seats, and the DG quite rightly did not want to deliver her speech to a half-empty hall. Eventually, Mike Thorn declared the session open, remembered to ring the bell, and the DG was introduced. This was her big moment. Having agonised over her speech for some time, she decided to simply tell her story, how she came to join Rotary and what a difference it has made to her life. She read her speech from typewritten notes, saying that she was not an actress who could remember lines, so it was better to read.  During her club visits she has been regularly asking Rotarians why they joined Rotary, but when they asked her why she had joined she always declined to answer, saying that her story would be told at the Conference.  It was an uplifting story of achievement through adversity (the theme of her Conference, in fact) and I think the audience liked it. When she had finished speaking, Lynne leaned over and said we had better stand up. I wondered what she meant until I looked over my shoulder and saw that the DG was getting a standing ovation. How proud of her I was at that moment!

                                                The DG delivers her speech to Conference

The rest of the morning session continued in similar fashion, with one excellent speaker following another. Straight after the DG it was the turn of RI representative Jens Erik Rasmussen, who delivered messages from Gary Huang, President of RI, underlining the theme of Light Up Rotary. Once again I was very impressed with his command of English, even colloquial phrases which come from living here. We later discovered that he came over to Scotland as a youngster on a Youth Exchange visit, which helps to explain his knowledge of English, although not his accent, which had no hint of Scottish brogue.

                                                         Gary and Corinne Huang

Jens Erik was followed by Mark Cunnell, District 1140 Rotaract Representative. Although very nervous before the event, he delivered his presentation manfully, despite the misfortune of having his lapel microphone fall to the floor at one stage. He made some very good points about how Rotary and Rotaract can help each other, although I think he slipped up when he said that Rotaractors can't attend lunch time meetings because they are at work. The inference was that Rotarians are too old to still be at work. On reflection - fair point. He also said that Rotaractors could help Rotarians with IT matters, the inference here being that we were IT illiterate and knew little or nothing about Social Media. Fair point again.

                                                    Mark Cunnell

Next up was Ken Billington, DG of 1070 District, and our guest at dinner the previous evening. He spoke about Trade Aid, a charity that he passionately supports, and he did an excellent job, bringing stories, humour and emotion into his delivery, which certainly generated a great deal of interest in Trade Aid from clubs around the District.  He was followed by the incomparable Andy Reid, who lost three limbs after he stepped on an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) whilst serving with the army in Afghanistan. His story, told in such a matter of fact way, would inspire anybody who had suffered setbacks in their life. He picked himself up, married his fiancé, and had his first child 2 years ago. He has put himself through all manner of gruelling challenges including long distance running on prosthetic legs to raise money for service charities. What impressed me most about him was his refusal to blame anybody else for his injuries. It would be tempting to blame the Government, the army, his officers, for putting him in danger on that day. But he refuses to do any of that. As he says ‘It was my choice to join the army and I knew the dangers.’ When he finished speaking, the room rose as one to give him a standing ovation, which went on for a good minute or so.

                                            The DG with Andy Reid

The next two speakers after the coffee break were invited by the DG after we had heard them speak at the District 1250 Conference last year. We thought they were absolutely fantastic then, and they didn’t disappoint today. Chris Connors, a hairdresser, took a group of trainee hairdressers to  a remote part of South Africa a couple of years ago to try and help a group of young children, all suffering from AIDS, who were living in an orphanage. He was moved to tears by what he saw and as a result set up Coco’s Foundation, which takes young people from the UK out to Africa where projects to help children like these are undertaken. Most of the audience today were also moved to tears.

                                                          Chris Connors with friend

Then came Jane Walker MBE, who 12 years ago set up the Philippine Community Fund, to help families living in utmost poverty, eking a living from what they can find on municipal rubbish dumps. Her story was both shocking and uplifting, and her charity has been instrumental in ending child labour and protecting children from the human trafficking industry for over 12 years.  At the time she first went to the Philippines , she was a well paid senior executive for a chain of newspapers in the Midlands, but chose to live among the families of squatters living and working on an open dump. In 2008 she was awarded an MBE and in 2009 was made UK Woman of the Year. She now lives in Manila, where she is a Rotarian, and in 2012 was made a Paul Harris fellow.

                                           Jane Walker at her stall in the Rotary Showcase

The final speaker of the session had been eagerly awaited by everyone. George ‘Johnny’ Johnson is the last surviving member of the famous 617 Squadron, nicknamed The Dambusters, who launched the audacious raid on German dams in the industrial Ruhr valley in 1943, using bouncing bombs designed by Barnes Wallis. Johnny was a bomb-aimer on one of the 19 Lancaster bombers that took part in the raid. He is now 93 years old, but stood squarely in the middle of the stage, supported only by his walking stick, and had the audience spellbound as he spoke about life in the RAF during the war years, and how they seemed to literally fly by the seat of their pants in those days, without any of the equipment and systems that modern pilots take for granted. His aircraft was crippled by anti-aircraft fire whilst returning from the raid, and they only just managed to get back to home soil. Although the raid was not decisive in the context of the war, Johnny feels that, coupled with our success at Alamein a few months earlier, the Dambusters raid did raise morale in Britain and consequently helped to tilt the fortunes of war in favour of the Allies.

Johnny had obviously been standing in one position for too long, because as he turned  to receive a gift from the DG he stumbled into her. She was able to support him whilst help arrived in the form of Chris Connors, who showed amazingly quick reactions as he bounded onto the stage and helped Johnny into a seat. It should have been me jumping on to the stage, as I was probably closest to the action, but at that very moment I was fiddling with the camera to get a shot of him shaking hands with the DG, so I missed the incident completely. Anyway, if I had seen him stumble, I would probably have made things worse by tripping in my haste to get on stage (I have form in this regard, just ask Denis Fuller’s friend Peggy).

                                         RAF legend meets Rotary legend

The session finished at about 1 p.m. and Sharon and Tony headed off to the  SS Great Britain where they were going to meet their son Ben. Lynne and Richard stayed to join is at the VIP lunch, which was a sandwich buffet. After lunch they went out to explore Bristol, whilst the DG and I went back up to our suite for a couple of hours well-earned rest before the evening activities. Jens Erik and Cornelia were much more energetic. They took a taxi to the Clifton Suspension bridge, about 3 miles away, and walked back.

                                                      Clifton Suspension bridge

The evening was to start with the DG’s reception at 6.30, followed by the Gala Dinner at 7.30. Invitees to the Reception were all the Club Presidents present at Bristol, together with first time Conference-goers and DG guests. Obviously we had to be there to meet people as they arrived, so we aimed to be at the Reception room for 6.20p.m. This Conference was being run, as you can see, with military precision. Ron  Enticott came and collected the jacket I was lending him, and a bow tie. I also gave him my old dress shirt, to try and save him buying a new one but mine had a 16⅟₂ collar and he takes 17⅟₂, so he didn’t think it would fit. Pauline Hedges had been at work during the morning and was staying with her brother in Bristol. She was due to arrive at the Hotel at about 5 p.m. and we offered our room to her to get changed in. All our guests were meeting in our room before the Reception, so it was going to be busy.

                                               The DG with Jens Erik and Cornelia

As we all know, ladies need a lot of time to get ready, and the bigger the event, the longer it takes. So, at 4.25 I was advised that the bathroom had been commandeered from 4.30, leaving me just 5 minutes to have a shower and get dressed. Fortunately I achieved the deadline with 2 minutes to spare, and I was then ready to supply the DG and any other visitors to our suite with refreshments. We had brought a lot of wine and beer with us, so were well prepared for visitors. As it happened, no visitors arrived until 6 p.m. the first being Pauline, who needed our room and bathroom, so it was the DG’s turn to be turfed out. Whilst Pauline was getting ready, Sharon, Lynne, and their husbands turned up, followed by Les Wilson, Ken Billington and Elaine Sefton.  Pre-Reception drinks, therefore got under way at 6.10 and the DG and I had to go downstairs five minutes later. The sisters and husbands came with us, as did the DG guests, leaving  just Pauline to shut the door behind her.

                                                 Elaine and Ken

We took the lift down to the DG’s reception, arriving at the allotted hour of 6.20. A few people were already forming an orderly queue, and also waiting for us was another DG friend, Martyn Harwood, and his lovely wife Jill. Martyn is Governor of District 1100, which is the District where Bristol is situated. He was therefore invited to the Gala Dinner, and the Reception beforehand.  At 6.30 there was a sizeable queue forming outside the Reception room, and Joe, the chief steward was finding it difficult keeping control of the throng.  So the event was opened and the DG and I waited to greet everybody as they entered. The original idea was that Lynne and Sharon would also stand with us, but this was abandoned when Sharon needed to sit down.

                                             Martyn, Jill, Ken and Mukesh

The first in were Jens Erik and Cornelia, followed by Martyn and Jill, Ken, Elaine and Les after which it was first come, first served. I had a great time welcoming people to the reception, kissing the ladies and being generally full of bonhomie. Obviously I don’t know everybiody, and some people clearly wondered who I was, until I explained. A few greeted me with ‘Hello there’ and we all know what that means, don’t we? After a short while, the queue was getting longer, and slower to pass through.  The problem was that people wanted to stop and chat to me, and who am I to spoil their chance of speaking to Rotary Royalty. Some of them may never get another chance, so I didn’t want to disappoint. Anyway, the backlog improved when Joe got involved and people started to move quicker.  Once everybody was in, I was able to circulate among the guests, and spent some time comparing Consort notes with Jill Harwood. It was interesting to hear that Martyn was not visiting individual clubs at all, but was getting them organised into zones, so that he could visit several at the same time. In the meantime Sharon and Lynne seemed to be enjoying themselves working the room, and Tony and Richard looked a bit uncomfortable in their brand new Dinner suits. The time went too quickly before we were summoned into the Conference Hall, which was now transformed into a Ballroom.

                                                Don't mess with Richard and Tony, 'The Management'

The DG’s party were held back, as we were entering the room to the tumultuous applause of the other guests (or at least that was the plan). Our group constituted the DG and I, Jens Erik and Cornelia, Sharon and Tony, Lynne and Richard, Chris Jenner and Mark Cunnell  (District Rotaract Representative).  As we waited to make our entrance, we psyched ourselves up by doing some high fives and the like. At this point Cornelia joined in with the comment ‘let’s kick their arses’ (at least that’s what I think she said). It wasn’t quite as I would have said it, but I know what she meant.  It was quite a while before the hall was seated, enabling David Thompson, the MC to call us in. We entered the room in order of rank, which meant that I was last in, following closely behind the DG, and what a cheer we got from the assembled throng as we were clapped in (the second time in a month that I have been clapped in to a dinner).

                                            Rhapsody in Blue - Cornelia and Sharon

Once we were seated and the applause had died down, the DG felt it was time for the party to commence. Out came the flying balloons, the party poppers and noise making gadgets. We had the edge over most others, due to the fact the DG had brought some football horns along which made quite a racket when blown. They were only rivalled by Tony Pipe, who on one of the two Aurora tables, manufactured a makeshift wind instrument from a menu card. I don’t know what Jens Erik and Cornelia made of it all, but some were not impressed with the noise, and the DG was actually threatened by Brand Richey with a jug of cold water down her back if she didn’t desist blowing that damn horn. She didn’t desist and got wet as a result.

                                           David Williams, Peter and Ann McDonough and Julia Jelly

Things calmed down a little as the food arrived and I was pleased that the menu we had chosen some weeks ago was going down well with the diners. The starter was a salmon medley, including salmon mousse and gravadlax (rather a smaller portion than I remember from the tasting), followed by a mini roast lamb joint, then chocolate mousse.  During the meal, Doreen and Pauline had organised a raffle whereby every diner had an envelope in front of them with 5 raffle tickets in it. We were invited to buy these tickets for £5. This seemed to elicit a good response. The aim of the raffle was to raise money towards the Rotary End Polio Now campaign, with a target being set of £1140, being the number of our District. The marvellous thing is that, with the Bill Gates Challenge, every £ raised by Rotary towards the Polio campaign will be tripled by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In the event, the raffle actually made £1500, meaning that the Charity receives £4,500.

After coffee was served, the DG decided she wanted to visit the toilet before the entertainment started, which was in the form of a comedian by the name of Ian Richards. It was quite a trek to the accessible bathroom, and by the time we got back to the ballroom, the comedian had started!  As  anyone knows, one thing you must never do when a comedian is on stage, is arrive late. They can make the walk to your table very embarrassing indeed , as they heap jokes and insults on you. On this occasion, it was not too bad, as he seemed to have been briefed as to who the DG was and was relatively kind to us as we returned to our seats. Certain other members of the audience were not so fortunate, including Jens Erik, who was struggling with the comedian’s range of accents, and said afterwards that he only understood about 70% of what had been said. In Cornelia’s case I fear it may have been less than that. Unfortunately, in view of their position at the head of the top table, they were in his line of fire from the outset. Ian Richards was very funny indeed, treading the fine line between what was acceptable and what wasn’t with great skill. I suspect that his act could be very different indeed in front of a different audience. As I looked around the room, Julia Jelly didn’t look very amused with some of his jokes, but then she laughed at other times. Poor Peter McDonough was the butt of a few ‘ageist’ gags, but took it all in good heart, which is really all you can do. Even Lynne and Richard didn’t escape his attention, as he heaped scorn on their assertion that Braintree was in East Anglia.

                                           Bill Gates Challenge?  I marry one beautiful sister and get three

The night finished with dancing to ‘The Johnny Brewer Sound’, or in other words a disco run by John Brewer. John impressed me in Jersey last year, with his ability to notice what keeps people on the dance floor, and keep on playing it, and he didn’t disappoint this time either. I am always amazed at the number of apparently experienced DJs who seem unable to grasp this simple concept.

                                       Jens Erik and Cornelia on the dance floor - it must be Abba playing

As usual the evening finished in the bar, and this time a group of us (The DG had gone to bed earlier) had the satisfaction of being thrown out at 2 a.m.  Well, not literally. I thought the barmaid put it very nicely when she came over just before 2 o’clock and said ‘Do you have any last orders?’ We got the message without anything else being said.