February 2012
Ever forgotten your own birthday?
The history of Lions in the Meon Valley goes back almost forty years to 1973 when the club was inaugurated. For twenty of those years, the regular home for our monthly meetings has been the Uplands Hotel, Droxford, where we gather on the first Monday of every month for business meetings. Brian Lay the Proprietor has kindly hosted our meetings for all that time at no cost to the club.
Being able to manage our costs in this way is important to Lions because it allows us to channel all our monies into charitable causes. Recently, we were able to show our gratitude with the presentation of a certificate of appreciation, plus a cheque for £300 to his favourite charity, Kidney Research UK.
Brian returned the favour by unearthing the original MVLC Charter certificate which had been lying dust-covered, in storage at the Uplands for all this time. To everyone's surprise we discovered that the club received its charter on 24 January 1973 - a whole two months earlier than the March anniversary we had been celebrating mistakenly for the last few years!
At this month's meeting we welcomed Miriam Miller, a local Guide to whom we provided sponsorship of £250 to attend an international jamboree in Canada. Miriam presented the story of her visit to Nova Scotia where, together with 500 other guides, she attended "Heritage Explosion" - a celebration of 100 years of Guiding in the region. Many new friendships resulted and her trip to Niagara Falls will live long in her memory. Also, at the meeting we were able to "badge" our new members, Peter and Diana Angelis, bringing our membership to a very healthy 27. Welcome Peter and Diana!
In January we supported the Ford Sports and Social Sea Angling club at their annual fishing competition on Weston Shore, Southampton Water. In all we had 162 adult and nine junior participants, and 26 of the anglers caught 31 fish between them. John Brown was the outright winner landing a total catch of 2lbs 11ozs, with Zak Stokes winning the junior section with a 13ozs flounder. Overall the Fishing Festival raised £2,268 and with the Lions Raffle adding another £173, we totalled £2,441 for the day. This was the 38th fishing festival event and since the Lions have been involved, we have raised over £30,000 for Naomi House, the Winchester based hospice. Many thanks to all the fishermen who took part again this year.
Lions also supported Swanmore Parish Council this month by replacing two vandalised trees on the Recreation Ground, by way of a thank-you to Swanmore for use of the field for the Annual Fete. This year's event is on Saturday 14 July - put in on your calendar now!
Left: Lions Roy Cuthbertson, Roger Morfill and Dinah Weberstadt get their hands dirty.
