Club News

At the Club’s March meeting Lin Holder, the Club’s newest member, gave a very informative and interesting talk about SERV Kent Bloodrunners. Lin is one of the volunteer controllers for the Kent area.

SERV stands for Service by Emergency Response Volunteers and SERV Kent began in 1993. It is a charity providing a courier service 24hours a day, 365days of the year using around 150 volunteer bike riders, car drivers and controllers.

Lin explained that although the groups are known as Bloodrunners they in fact do a great deal more than delivering blood and blood products to NHS hospitals. The volunteers collect samples and deliver them to the appropriate laboratories and testing facilities. They also collect and deliver urgent supplies between hospitals.

The role of SERV Kent includes support for Demelza and Ellenor hospices, with collection and delivery of drugs between sites and of equipment to patients’ homes.

Other services involve the collection and delivery of donated breast milk, and support for home dialysis and transplant patients.

Since 2013 SERV Kent has supported Kent Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance with deliveries of blood to their base at Redhill.

Lin said that in the past year SERV Kent has carried out over 4500 NHS blood & sample transfers, 776 air ambulance support journeys, 222 milk runs, 385 home dialysis deliveries, 143 transplant medication journeys and 15 hospice support calls.

As a registered charity, SERV Kent provides all these services free of charge to the NHS.

They certainly are the “unseen emergency service”.

To find out more please visit www.servkent.co.uk

Helen Jones was the club’s guest speaker in February. Helen is a member of Faversham Rotary, but on this occasion she was talking about Canterbury Street Pastors.

Helen is one of a team of trained volunteers who go out onto the streets of Canterbury on a Saturday evening from 9pm until 2-3am on Sunday morning. They are there to help people, to care for them and to listen to them. The Street Pastors provide non-judgemental support while promoting safety.

Members heard stories of how Street Pastors help young people who may have become separated from friends on their night out. Rough sleepers also benefit from the support offered by the Street Pastors.

To find out more about the Canterbury Street Pastors, please have a look at www.streetpastors.org

The recently introduced tradition of a Burns’ Night supper was very well attended this year with 38 members and guests sitting down with wee drams of the Famous Grouse, all the better to add flavour to the obligatory haggis. Georgia the Chef faced not only the challenge of cooking haggis for the first time ever but also the biggest one yet prepared and cooked by William the Tartan Butcher here in Faversham. The haggis refused to be lifted from its oven dish and collapsed in stages with the effort. Thankfully President David Kirsch-Mills had a sufficiently large section to ceremoniously parade round the guests and to stab with the dirk handed to him by Billy Rae, our regular guest with the most wonderful baritone voice. 

Simon Moore delivered a very evocative speech on the immortal memory of Robert Burns, which was warmly applauded. John Blackford recited from memory the first verse of Burns’ touching poem “John Anderson, my jo” in a toast to the lassies, to which Clarissa Hanna replied with a contemporary poem, “Mrs Midas” from the Scottish poet Carol Ann  Duffy, followed by a reference to Melania Trump’s inauguration hat, which clearly puzzled some of the audience. 

“Ae Fond Kiss” sung beautifully by Billy Rae silenced the room and the evening ended with the traditional joining of hands to sing “Auld Lang Syne” . Some guests have already signed up for Burns’ Night next year…