My Life as a Lion

Happy New Year to everyone who reads this blog. I hope that it brings you everything you want. For me it will eventually bring me to the position of District Governor of district 105M within Lions Clubs International but there are several challenges that face me before then.

For one thing I have to be elected at convention in March and, although I am the only candidate, this can not be taken for granted. Nevertheless I have to work on the basis that I will be elected and start the job of putting together a district cabinet for my year.

This coming weekend I have the last training session with my fellow vice governors before the training school at International Convention in Hamburg in July. After that it is only two and a bit months to district convention and I need to have the bulk of my cabinet finalised by then.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and will let you know how it all goes in future posts. In the meantime I need to tell you about my life as a Lion since my last post at the end of November.

As I said last month December is a relatively quiet month for Lions activities at district level although it is a busy fund-raising month for my, and most other, Lions Clubs. In Marston Green Lions we have been running a door to door collection around Chelmsley Wood and Marston Green for over 30 years and for the last ten or so I have been responsible for organising the collection.

The organisation of our Christmas collection starts in September and by our December business meeting on the 5th just about everything was in place. The highlight of the meeting, however, had nothing to do with Christmas but was the induction of our newest member, Liam, as a Lion. Liam was our Young Ambassador candidate from last year and at 19 years of age has significantly reduced the average age of the club. He is a medical student and as such will not have as much free time as some to help us out but I know he will do what he can and he is a valuable addition to the club.

Getting back to Christmas, the activities proper started for me on Saturday the 8th December when Christine and I drove down to Gaydon to pick up the Land Rover that was loaned to us by Jaguar Land Rover. They have lent us a vehicle for all but one of the last 30 years and it is very gratefully received as it saves us a considerable amount of money. For Marston Green we deliver envelopes and cards to every house and I spent two and a half hours on Sunday delivering my 500.

The collections started on Monday 10th December. For each collection we need the following personnel

• Santa
• Driver
• Sleigh Controller – looks after Santa and tells driver when it is safe to move on
• Team Leader – directs the collectors and the sleigh round the route (my job)
• At least 4 collectors who knock on the doors to let people know that Santa is on his way and to ask for donations

On the Monday we had an ex-member, Clive, as Santa, my wife Christine driving, club member Angela as Controller and five collectors. The night passed without incident and we managed a decent £237 collection. Indeed the only night we had any incident was the Wednesday when the speakers attached to the sleigh, which we play Christmas music through, fell off on the way to the start point. We did not notice until we arrived and by the time we retraced our journey they were nowhere to be seen and we had to collect without music. I returned home to find a message from our President Pauline to say that they had been found. To cut a long story short, the speakers had hit the car of the daughter of one of our ex-members. She used to come out with the sleigh when she was younger and just happened to be driving behind us when the speakers fell off. The speakers were damaged beyond use but fortunately the car suffered no damage. By the end of the evening, being the resourceful people that Lions are, we had rigged up an alternative using some old stereo speakers.

Over the eight nights that we collected we had 16 lions and 18 club supporters out with us. Of those two drove (Christine did seven nights and Bob one), five played Santa (Clive, David, Bob, Wim and Ian) and the rest collected or acted as controller. I was Team leader every night. We raised a total of £3145 which was a very good result. The weather was kind to us too with only 20 minutes of rain on the Friday and 10 minutes on the Sunday (both of the nights Ian was Santa?). I know that some clubs who collected beyond the 18th December had to cancel due to the rain so we were very lucky.

The year ended in Lions terms with a meal at District Governor Paul and Jackie’s house with 2nd VDG Ian and Joy there as well (The food was excellent and the company even better as a 4am finish testifies to.) on the 28th and a New Years Eve do for some of my club at the Marston Farm Hotel. All in all a very good year and what promises to be an even better one ahead.

Lion Simon Moss

@simonhmoss @MarstonGnLions @lions105m @lionsclubsorg

1820 miles travelled as 2nd VDG

650 miles travelled as 1st VDG

At least 750 hours since 1 July 2011 on Lions’ activities