On this occasion our President, Nick Bell, presided over a special dinner evening. Special because we enjoyed the presence of our Winchester Mayor, Cllr Jamie Scott, our speaker, and his wife, Mayoress Wendy Scott. In addition, President NIck welcomed three representatives from Bluebird Care: Daniel Langridge, Head of Partnerships and Development, Chloe Hardy, Care Team Supervisor and Travis Tanner, a Bluebird Team Member. Nick also welcomed Kimberley Barber (Editor of the Hampshire Chronicle and an Honorary Member), Oleksii Khomiakov and Graham Munro.
This evening, for the first time in our club’s history, President Nick signed our first Community Partnership with Bluebird Care a prestigious, many times award winning company that provides tailored home care to enable people to stay in the house they know and love.
The founder of the company is a former Winchester Rotarian, Norman Murphy, and through the professional relationship with Daniel and a present Winchester Rotarian, Deborah Macartney, we have a productive liaison with Bluebird Care. It was a proud moment for members to witness our first Business Partnership Agreement.
Our after dinner speaker, Winchester Mayor, Cllr Jamie Scott, took us down ‘Memory Lane’ with his presentation entitled “How Life Used to be in Simpler Times”. Touching on many topics dating from the 60’s, he reminded us of friendship and family life and experiences, building our character. He mentioned youth clubs and camping holidays, which were more modest in those days. He recalls climbing trees, building camps, sending postcards to parents and relatives.
The music scene was next on his agenda – Beatles, girls screaming – one can still hear them! Bay City Rollers followed, then Slade Band, Glam rock, Heavy Metal and many more.
TV programmes came next: “Are You Being Served”, Bruce Forsyth, Tommy Cooper, Dad’s Army, Two Ronnies, “Sound of Music” every Christmas. There were many more – our Mayor has a very good memory for the past!
He reminded us of the many excellent children’s programmes produced for TV. There were cartoons such as “Bugs Bunny”, “Wacky Races”, “Top Cat”, “Tom and Gerry”. Blue Peter was a particularly interesting children’s programme together with John Craven’s children’s news programmes.
Finally, we were reminded of the black and white television – you have to begin somewhere! Party line landline telephones were mentioned – trying not to listen in to the neighbour’s conversations. “bob a job” was the going rate for young ones to do a car wash or some gardening. Today, £10 to 20 is the price of a car wash by our young ones.
Our thanks to Mayor, Cllr Jamie Scott, for taking us down “Memory Lane” – some of our younger members were too young to recall all the earlier events! A certain older one could recall when the milkman delivered the milk by horse!
Diana Brooks
Click here to read the Hampshire Chronicle report on the Business Partnership.
