LOCKERBIE ANNANDALE SPEAKERS
ANNANDALE Speakers held their twelfth and final meeting of the season at the
Queen’s Hotel on March 26th. President John Edgar, “suited and booted” welcomed
the gathering, brought us up to date with the saga of his new boiler and handed
control of the meeting to Kenneth Morland who introduced each of the evening’s
speakers with his view of how each speaker would appear at a party together with his
witty accompanying banter.
Our first speaker was Robert Jardine with the title of “On the nod”. Robert used the
title to take us into the world of auctioneering and its history going back to Greek
customs. Having been a farmer and experiencing the profession from that perspective,
he was able to turn this around to his current occupation in working directly in the
industry. Robert had researched his subject well and when he added his own
anecdotes, he was able to give the audience a fascinating insight in to the world of the
auctioneer and its possible future. Robert’s enthusiastic style and his gentle use of
humour all contributed to an excellent delivery.
Next to the rostrum we had Alistair Stevenson in place of Bobby Smith. Alistair used
the title of “Off the blocks” to lead us a bit of a dance as he delved with different
aspects of “a block”, using examples such as an executioner’s block, Madame La
Guillotine to the Ballet dancer’s point or “block”. There was a brief mention of Lego
blocks and the wreck of the Tokyo Express off Land’s End and the resultant
depositing of thousands of Lego pieces all around the south coast of England. A very
clear and animated delivery made this a very interesting talk from Alistair.
Unfortunately the next speaker and one other later speaker failed to turn up or to make
any apology which gave Mr. Speaker a potential timing problem but Kennie
effortlessly spun out matters to smoothly cancel the potential damage.
The evening resumed after the tea break as George Gilhooly took charge as Topics
Master with a series of diverse and thought provoking questions which all required
each victim to give a full response. To their credit, the recipients of the questions
Michael Dickie, Andrew Armstrong, Sandy Grant, Donald Martin, John Reid,
Jack Forrest and David Bell answered the various challenges with thoughtful and
humorous responses.
Once this section was over those who had escaped a topic could relax as Laurie
Howell came to the rostrum with the title of “Somewhere along the line”. Laurie, in
his usual relaxed, gentle manner began with an observation he had made during the
last World Cup, then moved to mention lines such as the Equator, snowline, party line
etc..However Laurie brought his audience back to the title as he talked about the way
since the late19th century nations such as Great Britain and France had arrogantly
divided areas of the Middle East and Africa into countries using straight lines with no
regard to the ethic and tribal regions that they were destroying. This has left today’s
generation with some terrible wars and disturbing situations. Laurie interspersed his
talk with various dates, treaties and politicians’ names indicating the research he had
undertaken enabling him to deliver a fascinating condensed history lesson which is so
relevant to today’s world as we live with the aftermath of that stupidity
Our next speaker failed to materialise and it was left to President John Edgar to
deliver, as is our custom, his only presentation of his year of office.
John used his title of “Reached the terminus” to smoothly switch to tell us about the
Riding of the Marches, especially the Annan Riding and its annual pageant. Using
minimum notes John was soon in full stride as he took us through some of the history
of the event and how the history impacts on some of the activities that live on today.
Having been a past Cornet, as had several of his family, his pride in carrying on the
tradition was evident in his enthusiastic delivery. Engaging the audience with plenty
of eye contact and gentle humour John gave us a first class President’s ending to the
evening’s session.
Timekeeper for the evening was John Kerr, who proposed his vote of thanks to the
three other performers of the evening, Mr Speaker (Kenneth Morland), Mr Topics
Master (George Gilhooly) and Mr Critic (Bruce Edensor).
Our President then brought a fascinating evening and, sadly, the season to a close and
the final meeting will be the AGM on Thursday 2nd April at the Queen’s Hotel
Lockerbie at 7.30 p.m.