14th October 2006

Hello Again

The Friends held their AGM on Wednesday at midday. Very few turned up but we did have an interesting meeting.
The day started SO badly for Margaret, (Hon: Secretary) and I. We had to re-do the Agenda at 10am and Margaret’s printer wouldn’t print, so she emailed it to me and then my printer told me that I had a paper jam! I opened it up…nothing jammed. Unplugged it and tried again….can’t print because of a paper jam.
Just one of those days?
We eventually did manage to print a copy and put it in the photocopier, only to have it chewed up in the feeder.
Luckily the printer then worked fine and we did manage to photocopy enough copies to take to the meeting.
We thanked Reg Lowman MBE for his 27 years as Chairman and the 3 years he has been President, he will now be a Vice President for life.
We welcomed Dr Rodger Sleet as our New President. A position he held for 2 years until he stepped aside for Reg Lowman to be President when he retired as Chairman in 2003.

During this manic time I had a phone call from a secretary in the Princess Anne Hospital asking how the Friends could possibly close the shop and Tea bar there.
She said that a Minuted meeting of the Friends Committee had decided to withdraw from the PAH because we weren’t taken enough money over there.
I told her that it wasn’t true but she assured me that a senior member of the Trust had told a meeting in the PAH that this was what had happened.
It is really very unfortunate that these stories seem to have a life of their own, once started.
We were asked to vacate the two areas in the PAH to make way for new areas needed by the Trust. As a League we have no security of tenure in the hospitals but having been operating for over 53 years we believe that we “belong” in the hospitals.
We trust the SUHT to be fair to us and we try to be amiable and flexible in our outlook and “help” the Trust as well as the patients and staff in both hospitals.
We do understand the upset this has caused to our volunteers, who do hate change of any sort, but we must regroup and show that we can change and benefit from the experience.
So here we are facing new challenges with a good strong committee to lead us and we hope that, when our new refreshment area opens early 2007 on F level in the SGH, we can welcome all our old friends and new ones to our new look area.

Another week in the SGH, another set of problems but many laughs and smiles too.