The report in the minutes of our business meeting for the 6th of December was fulsome, so I’ll just paste it in here:
- Our Grab A Grannie shopping trip to the Metro Centre was a success last Thursday 2nd, leaving Allendale at 1.30pm, with two ladies requiring wheelchair pushers for the duration. Our ‘forward party’ of June, Ferg and Johnnie were deployed and met us with the requisite chairs. The rest of the visitors were ‘absorbed’ into the Christmas shopping mayhem of the mall immediately, not to be seen again until departure at 6.30pm! Whilst Margaret, Marion and Prue wheelied our less able folks, meeting with the forward party at 4pm for refreshments. The ‘pushers’ did have a lapse into the ‘Pier’ for a ‘we while’(!), but our visitors didn’t mind a jot and sat happily chatting until we emerged a few carriers heavier and beaming happily. Fellow committee members who had been unable to wangle time off were on hand for our return to the marketplace, when we gave everyone a small box of Thornton’s and escorted home those who would let us! We have one ‘thank you’ letter in from a senior, which I’ll give to Steph with the rest for inclusion in our scrapbook. However…
- We were unaware that we had clashed with someone in Catton who organises three trips a year for locals. She had been unable to recover her costs because some of the ladies who frequent her trips came on ours instead. (Indeed, quite a few of these same folks had been with us on our Mystery Trip this summer.) The coach company she had used for years did not charge her the full amount so that she was not out of pocket. Lessons to be learnt one way or another, and Ann asked that we write a conciliatory letter.
So it was a lovely trip, but almost a kind of stepping on another organiser’s toes. I’m sure the lessons were taken on board in a kind-hearted mannery.
Meanwhile, Lynda McGregor had got a bunch of Lions and friends together for the Children in Need walk from Broadwood Hall to Hexham’s Bridge End Inn on the 11th December. Steph Jamieson had collated a few photographs in the Lions scrapbook, and it’s a delight to present them in this blog entry. It was later reported, at our next business meeting 7th February, 2005, that £218 had been forwarded on to the Children-in-Need coffers.
The Christmas season was definitely upon us, and the good deeds had been accomplished. Time for some special spirit of the festive season, which looked like a Lions social do at Pebbles, Santa’s Sleigh, and Carols around the square. But which would be first?