We are looking at events that happened back in March, 2005. Not so long since Queen Elizabeth’s Golden Jubilee. Today, 9th of September, 2022, the nation and the Commonwealth are in mourning at the death yesterday of the only monarch most of us have ever known, only a few months since she celebrated the Platinum (70th) anniversary of her accession to the throne. It’s a time of reflection over the past decades, much as we are doing in this online blog, but we remember from the perspective of loss and grief.
This time-travel perspective has coloured the images and events recorded in these regular entries, as it does today.
So we were considering a raft of funding requests at our March meeting. The Lions Club has never distributed cash notes, of course, to good cause beneficiaries, just accountable cheques or deposits into organisations’ bank accounts. But the image of the Queen on the currency of the realm is salutary, today.
We looked at a variety of funding requests and public service activities that had come in to the Secretary over the past months, and we decided how to apportion from our limited Charity Account funds:
- Haydon Bridge High School’s Barbados Sports Tour: £200
- Allendale Village Hall Film Club’s bid to Northern Media and Arts for projection equipment: £250
- Our District Treasurer (Lions District 109E) has appealed to all clubs in the district, for two distinctly needy causes as outlined below:
- A. Sleeping Bag Project toward rough sleepers under the rubric of the People’s Soup Kitchen, Newcastle: £90
- B. Street Children project in Glasgow: supporting runaway children in need: £100
- Hexham Multiple Sclerosis Society request: on hold for further consideration
- Group decision to earmark all funds generated over expenses from this year’s Allendale (May) Fair towards the Allendale Recreation Park renovation fund; in that context, a sortie into the Dene to begin the great Clean-the-Dene exercise has been arranged for the 20th of March, and a skip is on its way
Monday’s entry will offer a selection of images from the Dene Clearance, after which we’ll consider the range of Karaoke Heats in the run-up to the May Fair.