Otter Valley Rotary Club

Tonight was the visit to the Otter Valley Rotary Club, located in Ottery St. Mary. Yulia and Anne are both away, so it was just Sangmi and me this trip. The Otter Valley club is all-male, and is one of the ones that would be regarded by some people in some clubs to be full of "tired, old grey-headed men in grey suits." I found them to be decidedly lacking in grey suits, and they didn't strike me as being particularly tired. They were mostly grey-headed (the rest were bald), and thus tended to be older on the whole than some other clubs. They do love their parliamentary procedure, as evidenced by a mini-debate on a point of order regarding whether the club could appropriate money by a general vote rather than a vote on the recommendation of the executive committee. The debate there was resolved by the President quashing the discussion on the grounds that, as two members of the executive committee were not present, the executive committee should deal with the issue first out of courtesy to those two.

Both my and Sangmi's presentations went fine; we had both added in a couple of new items. She was in a picture in the Express & Echo, which she had added into her presentation (it was of the crowd at the Exeter Football Club on Easter Monday). She also noted, for the first time that I've heard in one of her presentations, that she was embarrassed to say that she had been an English teacher in Korea, as her English, by her term, isn't very good. She was later assured by the sergeant-at-arms that her English was good, and was fined 50p for speaking better English than some of the members of the club!

I was fined 50p for having talked on the phone just before the meeting started. Amanda had called me from Newark, which I thought was probably worth the 50p. I found the club to be pretty lively, and they were especially interested in the parts of my presentation that dealt with turkey hunting (I happen to have a picture of dad with a turkey). They had lots of questions about how hunting works in the US (apparently, here most animals that are hunted are raised for that purpose) and were surprised to find that it is legal to go out and shoot wild animals (which required a discussion of hunting seasons). Unfortunately, I couldn't lay my hands on the picture of Robert when he was about 10 with a gun in hand and something that he had killed; it would have made a nice addition.

We didn't depart for Ottery St. Mary until 6:40, which is a good bit later than usual. There were two reasons for this. First, it is only about a 25-minute drive out to Ottery St. Mary, and second, the Otter Valley club's meeting began at 7:30 rather than the 7:00 for most of the other dinner clubs that we have visited. As a result, we didn't leave the meeting site until after 10:00, and got home around 11:00, which is par for the course for these meetings.