Announcements
48 present.
John Pearson (Vice-Chairman) took the chair initially. St George, in chain mail and tabard, paid us a surprise, however, and took over the chairmanship.
We had one visitor: Alan Thomas, a retired judge.
The Chairman (Brian Eaton) made an appeal to members to make sure that their phones were switched off during meetings.
He reported that 5 members had participated in the inaugural ride of the Cycling Group. The next ride would be on 11 May.
Mike Hill (Events) reminded us that the St George’s Day Lunch would be taking place after the meeting. The pottery and brewery outing had been a success: Mike had been particularly impressed by the skill of the potters.
Andrew Cordery (Webmaster) reported that the Committee had decided to get some professional support for the website. A consultant had been engaged, and was working on a new site, which would be posted at www.winchcombe.com. The main advantage of the new site would be that it could be amended by different members of the Committee, rather than relying entirely on the webmaster, as at present.
Brian Parry (Walks) entertained us in his customary fashion.
Speaker
Our speaker was John Craig from the Devizes Probus Group. John is former firefighter, and was Chief Fire Officer for Wiltshire until his retirement.
In his talk, entitled “Going to Blazes”, John treated us to a series of amusing anecdotes drawn from his experiences as a fireman, introducing us along the way to some of the many facets of the work of the Fire Service. We heard about the rescue of a horse from a swimming pool, and of a duck frozen into the ice; we heard about the West Sussex fire-service and Lavinia the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk; we heard of John’s encounters with foreign firefighters, including the distinguished head of the Nigerian Fire Service, Mr Umbogo, who turned out to have been a ticket collector on the Great Western Railway.
A very entertaining talk.