Our final meeting at the Tennis Club was a really good evening and a fitting farewell.
Numbers were down owing to some illness and travel but for those of us who were there it was a relaxed evening mixed with some club information and a few laughs. Meryl Monk joined us again and as always, a pleasure to have her with us.
Our speaker for the night, our own Tony Francis who is extremely busy, took the opportunity to delay his presentation and he was replaced with back up Sally Fletcher, who called in sick and the backup for the backup was all set to fill the void, but acting Sergeant (Bill is indisposed with hand surgery) Mike Abercrombie and I made an executive decision not to tempt fate and decided to have a relaxed evening with club information and updates and enjoy our final night at the Tennis Club.
Mike even managed to find a number of misdemeanours for fines!! A gentle reminder it always pays to have a few coins at the ready, one never knows when one might be fined!
The Blankets for Kids Project is well underway with publicity in hand and blankets already arriving, all the hallmarks of a successful project again this year.
The project to begin the work on Whites Cottage at the Historical Village is now underway and we will soon get a list of tasks that need doing so we can volunteer to help out according to our level of expertise or just good old-fashioned enthusiasm. I am delighted to see this getting back on track and look forward to the progress we will make. It will need to be a club project with as many as possible volunteering to help.
The club was involved with Poppy Day on 22nd April, we sold poppies at 4 booths 3 in Botany and 1 at Pakuranga Plaza and were quite humbled by the generosity of the public, many donating 10- and 20-dollar notes and in some cases $50.00 notes. I haven’t heard the final sum raised yet, but I understand the Poppy/Welfare Trust of the RSA is very pleased with the outcome so far.
I represented the Club at the Dawn Service on Stockade Hill and laid a wreath on our behalf. Thanks to Meryl, who was at the service with her daughter and two granddaughters, for taking a photo for our Face Book page.
Our next meeting will be 10th May and it will be back at the Howick Club 5. 30pm.The speaker will be Wendy Spiller.
While it will be nice to be back at the Howick Club, I think we all agree that our time at the Tennis Club has been great. John and Jenny Richardson pulled out all stops to make the space welcoming and fit for purpose, and the caterer did such a good job of providing for us such a variety of very tasty food.
President Jenny also made it clear that if we have need of the premises again for a special event, we would be welcome.
A huge thank you to President Jenny and the board of the Pakuranga Tennis Club.
Kia Tupato, Kia noho haumaru. Take care, stay safe.
Madeleine East MNZM
President.