Goodbye Mr President (Part 1)

My year as President of the Rotary Club of Shepperton Aurora has now finished. To be honest I found the year to be a constant struggle for recognition of my elevated status by other Rotarians, and the general public at large. For instance at the District Conference in Eastbourne last October I had been looking forward to the Friday night club dinner, where we were joining our friends from Shepperton & Sunbury club. I understood that before the dinner there was to be a reception in honour of the club President at the Hotel. How nice to be appreciated, I thought.

Aurora at the Conference Gala Dinner

It was only when I arrived that I was told it is the custom for the President to buy drinks for all his or her club members at the Reception.  This can be expensive for the President, particularly when we have lots of members attending, as we have had on occasion. Fortunately for me our club only had 5 attendees this weekend, so I just bought a bottle of house red and house white and that was it. As it happened, everybody else wanted white wine, so I ended up with the bottle of red to myself. I didn’t think this impaired my judgement in any way as we walked to the Restaurant later, although the PDG claimed we had walked twice the distance as everybody else.

Enjoying the Conference

I had been particularly looking forward to day 3 of the Conference, on Sunday, when there was to be the Parade of the Presidents, reinstated after being dropped the year before. At last, I would get my moment in the limelight as I strutted on to the stage being cheered to the rafters by my adoring club members. I had prepared a short speech of just a few minutes duration in which I intended thanking everybody who had come along and outline some of my plans to develop the role of Rotary Club president, more on the lines of the US president, who gets a four year term of office before they have to look for another one.

The Parade of the Presidents

However things didn’t go quite as I had expected. The Parade of Presidents was rather a hurried affair to say the least. Firstly we had to sacrifice our coffee break whilst we were corralled backstage in roughly alphabetical order. Then we were called on to the stage in groups of six, as our names were announced. A quick shake of the District Governor’s hand, a group photograph and we were led off the stage. I tried valiantly to explain my plans to the District Governor, but he was already looking over my shoulder, probably wondering how many more hands he would have to shake that morning.

I meet the District Governor

A week later we had our Rotary club walk through Roman London, guided by our own Pauline Hedges. I almost suggested that if this was really Roman London, the President would be carried in a sedan chair on the shoulders of his slaves, but looking at my companions that morning, I thought better of it. Even though I had to walk the whole route, it was fascinating strolling through parts of London that I was not entirely unfamiliar with, but saw in a very different light with Pauline’s excellent descriptions. The walk finished with lunch on the Southbank at an excellent Restaurant called the Archduke.

Parts of the Roman wall are still visible in London

Early in November, twenty of us went on a tour of Shepperton Studios. We had been waiting years for this opportunity. Even though we held our meetings at the Studios for a couple of years, we could never find a way of getting a tour of the site.

Our guide looks exasperated

However thanks to an introduction from Richard Edgar, we finally got our tour and it was fascinating. The studios site is like a mini city, with hundreds of people busily constructing film sets, filming scenes and all the other jobs that go with film making. Several times we were almost run down by delivery vans, fork lift trucks or limousines delivering important people (none of whom I recognised). At the time there were two major films being made at the Studios, a Mary Poppins remake, and a Sherlock Holmes film. We had a coffee in the Old House before leaving. I thought there would be an executive lounge for me, but it must have been closed that day.

With my Bafta

There were two big highlights in November to tell you about. The first of these was the amazing concert in Chertsey which raised over £2,700 for CAMEO, one of my President’s charities this year, and for which I am so grateful to Doreen and Tony. I was looking forward to my first rock gig as lead singer, and just hoped my backing group would be up to the task. My plan was that the supporting act, Ancient Rock would play the first half of the show, and then I would do the second half, dazzling the audience with my vocal range.

Ancient Rock

You can imagine my disappointment when I found that Ancient Rock hogged the stage until well into the second half of the show. Eventually they allowed me on stage and backed me for the first number in my set, Proud Mary. I could tell that the audience loved this and I prepared myself for my next number, which was designed to raise the tempo. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but before I could launch into my legendary rendition of Maggie May, I was being ushered off the stage, being patted on the back, despite the ecstatic audience calling for me to sing ‘Get Off’. Unfortunately it isn’t a song I am familiar with, so I couldn’t oblige. Under the circumstances I decided to leave the stage with my dignity intact, thinking I’ll have to arrange my own concert next time and dispense with the backing group.

I take centre stage

The club held another very successful Youth Speaks competition in November. Being President, of course I got to look after the Mayor and his charming wife for the evening. I stayed just outside the Council Chamber with the mayoral party until everybody was seated, then heard David, our excellent MC announce ‘Please stand for the mayor’. This was the Mayor’s cue to enter the Chamber and take his seat as everybody else looked on. I stayed outside the Chamber waiting to be announced for my ceremonial entry, but for some reason the MC forgot to announce me, so I ended up shuffling in whilst the fire exits were being pointed out. I tried my best to make it look as though that was when I was supposed to enter.

Speaker's view of the Council Chamber

The winning Intermediate team, with Mayor

December, as usual, was the busiest time of year for the Rotary Club. As members will know, it was the Christmas collections that prompted me to join Rotary in the first place. I can remember, as a child in Staines, seeing the Christmas float coming down our road, with Santa riding inside (that was in the days before Health & Safety was invented) and with carols playing. It was a magical time, which I looked forward to every year. Although I didn’t know at the time it was organised by the local Rotary Club, I subsequently learnt that up and down the country, Rotary Clubs were organising similar activities.

Our sleigh (the elf is taller than Santa)

40-odd years later, when I was thinking about putting something back into the local community, I was invited to join Shepperton Aurora Rotary. I jumped at the chance, knowing that I could be part of the Christmas magic. Seventeen years later, it is still the thing I enjoy most as a Rotarian, particularly when I get the privilege of assisting Santa. The looks of awe on children’s faces as they see Santa walking up to their house are priceless, especially when they realise he knows their names! 

Touring the streets of Shepperton

We are blessed with a good supply of Santa’s assistants among our Members and Friends, which meant I only had one outing in that role this year, for the Studios Estate area of Shepperton. It is difficult to describe the excitement that is generated by Santa’s appearance in the neighbourhood. Children come running out into the street, parents want to take photos, and teenagers want selfies with Santa (a sign of the times). Santa even had a few hugs from middle-aged women. Who said Christmas is only for children? At one point I had 6 or 7 women posing for pictures with Santa, with each one wanting a photo on her own camera. It does hold up our progress when this sort of thing happens, but it’s all part of the magic and I wouldn’t change it for anything.

Counting up at the end of the evening

After the excitement of Christmas, and now into the second half of my year as President, it was time to get into another area I thoroughly enjoy, that of Youth activities. Early in January I was invited to Bishop Wand School, to be an adjudicator for an inter-house Youth Speaks competition. The event  was run on exactly the same lines as our competition. There were 8 teams in the competition, and the standard was so good, that the adjudicators, Vivienne Leighton, Debbie Lockhart and myself  had a very difficult job finding winners. We were given 15 minutes for our deliberations, but argued for so long it took 45 minutes for us to decide that the Best Speaker award should be shared between two speakers. This caused a problem for the school as they only had one medal in this category. Never again will I think the Youth speaks judges have an easy job.

Bishop's Building, Bishop Wand School, scene of the competition

It hasn’t all been work, of course. Early in January we had Norma’s cheese and wine party at the parish centre, an opportunity for members to meet their President in less formal circumstances. Members were asked to bring contributions towards the food and drink that evening. Even I was asked to bring something, which I was a bit surprised about, to be honest. After all, I was the guest of honour.  I know it’s an extreme example, but if you get invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace, you wouldn’t expect the Queen to bring a plate of vol-au-vents with her, would you? Of course I was much too dignified to complain about my treatment, and behaved as if this was quite normal, which sadly it is.

St Nicholas Parish hall

Later in the month a group of us attended the annual Burns Night Dinner organised by Shepperton & Sunbury Rotary. What a fine evening it was; I was resplendent in my Gicquel tartan tie, which a man down the pub who I bought it from, assured me was a little known Scottish clan. The room at Sunbury Arts Centre was beautifully decorated, as were all the tables. The haggis was piped in with great ceremony, followed by President Geoff Williams and his party. It was a pity that Lyn was unable to attend having booked previously, but she will be relieved to know that Mark Steptoe and I ensured her meal wasn’t wasted. Speeches were mercifully short, before the highland dancing began, with a caller making sure everyone knew what to do. I had heard that in the past there has been an award for ‘worst dancer’, so I stayed off the dance floor to ensure I didn’t suffer this ignominy.

Burns Night - how typical that I've been left out of the photo

For the last couple of years the Rotary Club has kept its’ stores of equipment in an empty office block across the road from the Bridge Hotel, where we meet. We knew our tenure would be temporary, as the block was scheduled  for demolition and re-building as flats, but we knew we would receive plenty of notice of our eviction. Well that notice came earlier this year, and we had to look around for suitable accommodation for our equipment, of which we seem to have a lot. We have 2 or 3 marquees of varying sizes which are used at the Shepperton Fair and other occasions which take up a lot of space, as do our various games like the Penalty Shoot Out, the Golf Game and Tombola. Then there is the generator for the sleigh and all the other stuff that goes with it.

So it was a bit of a headache trying to find somewhere big enough to keep all this stuff. However, before I started to worry too much, one of our members, the lovely Norma, offered us the use of her garage. Not only that, but she turfed out somebody else who had been using her garage, and paying rent for it. She wouldn’t accept a penny of rent from us. Once again I am amazed by the generosity of Rotarians. A day was fixed to move everything to Norma’s garage, and my next door neighbour Paul offered us the use of his white van to help. Most things fitted into either the van or one of our cars, but we had some problems with our Elf, who drives the sleigh at Christmas. He is over 6 feet tall (we weren’t overwhelmed with choice) and we struggled to get him in to the van, until we finally found a solution to the problem.