Area AGM

Wednesday 22nd AprilArea AGM. Penkridge Round Table is part of a larger Area, and each Area has its own committee, so they also have an AGM. So this evening five of us from Penkridge squeeze into Richard M’s car and shimmy down to Stourport for the Area 5 AGM. I’ve not been to an Area AGM before, but it’s not dissimilar to our own. Tonight there are around 50 tablers from the 16 individual tables across the area. This includes Steve Glaister, the outgoing Area Chairman; also here is Peter Manley the National president of Round Table Britain and Ireland (RTBI). Round Table is fairly sizeable, there are over 600 individual ‘tables’ with a total of around 7,000 members. But in the last few years membership, in general has declined, and the National Council is proposing some fairly innovative ways to tackle this decline. So when we get around to the speeches, Peter has a chance to say a few words about these changes, why they are necessary and what benefit it will bring to table.The rest of the ‘formal’ part of the meeting is more comical than our own table; we have no minutes from the last AGM - both incoming and outgoing secretary have denied responsibility for the lost minutes. There’s also a presentation of sports trophies: there are quite a number of Area sports competitions. Penkridge won the football competition this year;. but the football trophy is missing, so we come away with the squash trophy - maybe by next year someone will have returned the football trophy.The new chairman, Chris James, takes over (curiously dressed as a chicken, and with non-opposable thumbs this makes holding his speech a bit tricky, though amusing to watch), and he appoints his officers for the year.