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Website hits to date are ……2,504….!!

The Four-Way Test Of the things we think, say or do;

1. Is it the TRUTH?

2. Is it FAIR to all concerned?

3. Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

4. Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

By email to all members of Swindon Phoenix Rotary Club, Foothill Highlands Rotary Club, Tappahannock

Rotary Club and other selected Rotary Club Members. The comments expressed in this newsletter, if not credited to

someone else, are the thoughts & opinions of the Editor and therefore may not be the opinions of all the members of the

Rotary Club of Swindon Phoenix.

President Rtn,

Paul Parfrey

President Elect

P.P. Peter Collis

PHF Sapphire

President Nominee

Rtn, David Coe

Secretary;

P.P. John Flanagan

Treasurer;

Rtn, Steve Weisinger

The Rotary Club of

Swindon Phoenix District 1100 England

Bulletin (aptly named)

‘’The Birdy’ Issue number 26 Volume number 2 Number 5 of this Rotary Year

Here is a link to our Club Website www.swindonphoenixrotary.org

our previous bulletins can be found from the links page - or go straight there with this hyperlink

http://thephoenixbulletin.weebly.com

Editor; Past President Peter Goldsworthy. P.H.F. Sapphire Editor; Past President Peter Goldsworthy. P.H.F. Sapphire Editor; Past President Peter Goldsworthy. P.H.F. Sapphire

Winner of District 1100 Bulletin of the Year in a previous Rotary lifeWinner of District 1100 Bulletin of the Year in a previous Rotary lifeWinner of District 1100 Bulletin of the Year in a previous Rotary life

Is there any truth in the rumour that the Rotary Club of Swin-

don Phoenix Rotary games were so successful that the full

Olympic Games had to finish with our logo?!

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Sue O’Connell opened her talk by saying about her experience when carrying the Olympic Torch through Marlborough and how there were floods of people in the streets and people hanging out of windows to see this memorable occasion.

(Pictures taken of the screens power point presentation)

Sue went on to talk about SMASH and that the overall aim of the Project is to support and en-courage young people to increase their poten-tial for achievement in the future. The main part of this is that the children have mentors, a mentor, with the SMASH Project, is simply a

Meeting 15th August

Host Elliot Causton

Guest Speaker:

Sue O’Connell

The meal for this evening was Lasagne, chips and salad, with Treasurer Steve Weisinger being the difficult one and having a Chilli con carne. (probably the best meal in the room—I know I

was sat near him Golds!)

President Paul greeted the Ro-tarians and their partners and asked Host Elliott Causton to say grace.

Paul then gathered everyone af-ter the dinner and went on to ex-plain to the club how he noticed that President nominee David Coe and President elect Pe-ter Collis were not wearing their Jewels of office, he found this was worthy of a fine as the club took a lot of time and effort & cash in getting them, just as he was about to issue the fine, David decided to pull the jewel out of his pocket and explain that he had it on the whole time! The president decided to save the fine until next time.

(weak leadership!)

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more experienced adult who is willing to get to know a young person, give their time to devel-op the relationship, and share the benefit of their skills, knowledge and life experience.

The last part of Sue’s talk was all about her life experiences and the different types of jobs she has been in and that she started in I.T. but now has found a passion within Personal Training (fitness). Sue has launched her personal train-ing career and started up her own business called ‘SOLEAN’.

She went on to explain how we can all increase our fitness levels by just changing little things in our lifestyle i.e. taking the stairs rather than the elevator etc.

After Sue’s talk Elliott Causton stood up and explained that the SMASH section related real-ly well to the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) which he’s trying to bring for-ward to the club, he went on to explain that a few years ago he himself attended the RYLA course and that it had a big impact on him, he intends to use his experiences to make it a suc-cess in the next coming months.

Finally Elliott called upon the club to thank Sue in the usual way.

Nicole Price updated the club about the possi-bility for us to attend a tasting session in the ****** to see if it lives up to what the club is ex-pecting, a dozen Rotarians will be meeting at the ******** on Monday 20th August at 7:00pm.

The President stood up to give a final talk, he firstly went on to thank everyone for the food they are contributing to the ‘President at home’ on Sunday 19th August and that he is very much looking forward to seeing everyone there.

He then mentioned that the NSPCC Ball is at Blunsdon House Hotel on the 10th Novem-

ber and its £65pp.

After, Paul confirmed that we need more num-bers for the Charter Night which is being held

on 6th October 2012, we currently have over 60 people attending and the minimum is 100.

He went on to speak about the meeting which he had with Wiltshire Air Ambulance and that they have kindly offered to lend us two donkeys when doing our Santa run as an extra feature (does anyone have any ant-lers?!), also Heart FM will be attending and will be trying to turn it into a photo shoot.

Finally Paul mentioned that Steve Weisinger has been on holiday and if he’s remembered to bring a gift back for our ham-per, Steve kindly brought back some fudge and a calendar which will be a lovely addi-tion to what is already an amazing hamper.

Meeting closed at approx 9:30pm.

Note for your diary;

District Governor David and Val Hough-

ton’s official visit to Swindon Phoenix is

19th September 2012

more detail TBA

Weekend 19-21 October RNLI College

weekend away (see details next page)

Wot Jewel?

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Full details of this event and to book your places

please contact P.P. John Fisher asap

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Letter from Irish mother to a certain Johny O’Flanagan

Dear Son, Just a few lines to let you know I'm still alive. I'm writing this letter slowly because I know you can't read fast. We are all doing very well. You won't recognise the house when you get home - we have moved. Your dad read in the newspaper that most accidents happen within 20 miles from your home, so we moved. I won't be able to send you the address because the last Irish family that lived here took the house

numbers when they moved so that they wouldn't have to change their address. This place is really nice. It even has a washing ma-chine.. I'm not sure it works so well though: last week I put a load in and pulled the chain and have-n't seen them since. Your father's got a really good job now. He's got

Jokes

‘on the w

ing’

500 men under him. He's cutting the grass at the cemetery. Your sister Mary had a baby this morning but I have-n't found out if it's a boy or a girl, so I don't know whether you are an auntie or an uncle.

Your brother Tom is still in the army. He's only been there a short while and they've already made him a court martial! Your Uncle Patrick drowned last week in a vat of whiskey in the Dublin Brewery. Some of his work-mates tried to save him but he fought them off bravely. They cremated him and it took three days to put out the fire. I'm sorry to say that your cousin Seamus was arrest-ed while riding his bicycle last week. They are charg-ing him with dope peddling. I went to the doctor on Thursday and your father went with me. The doctor put a small tube in my mouth and told me not to talk for ten minutes. Your father offered to buy it from him. The weather isn't bad here. It only rained twice this week, first for three days and then for four days. Monday was so windy one of the chickens laid the same egg four times. We had a letter from the under-taker. He said if the last payment on your Grandmother's plot wasn't paid in seven days, up she comes. About that coat you wanted me to send you; your Uncle Stanley said it would be too heavy to send in the mail with the buttons on, so we cut them off and put them in the pockets. John locked his keys in the car yesterday. We were really worried because it took him two hours to get me and your father out. There isn't much more news at this time. Nothing much has happened. Your loving Mum P.S. I was going to send you some money but I had already sealed the envelope .

Thanks Conrad for this one

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Now for something alittle different—You're going to say "I didn't know that!" at least 5 times. Really neat stuff here:

Thanks Si in the USA for these.

Alaska

More than half of the coastline of the entire United States is in Alaska ..

Amazon

The Amazon rainforest produces more than 20% of the

world's oxygen supply. The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that, more than one hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the river, one can dip fresh water out of the

ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon river is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined and

three times the flow of all rivers in the United States ...

Antarctica

Antarctica is the only land on our planet that is not owned by any country..Ninety percent of the world's ice covers

Antarctica ..This ice also represents seventy percent of all the fresh water in the world. As strange as it sounds, how-ever, Antarctica is essentially a desert; the average yearly total precipitation is about two inches. Although covered

with ice (all but 0.4% of it, ice.), Antarctica is the driest place on the planet,with an absolute humidity lower than

the Gobi desert.

Brazil

Brazil got its name from the nut, not the other way around.

Canada

Canada has more lakes than the rest of the world combined. Cana-

da is an Indian word meaning ' Big Village '.

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Chicago

Next to Warsaw , Chicago has the largest Polish popu-

lation in the world.

Detroit

Woodward Avenue in Detroit, Michigan, carries the designation M-1, so named because it was the first

paved road anywhere.

Damascus , Syria

Damascus, Syria, was flourishing a couple of thousand years be-fore Rome was founded in 753 BC, making it the oldest continu-

ously inhabited city in existence.

Istanbul , Turkey

Istanbul, Turkey, is the only city in the world located on two conti-

nents.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles ' full name is:El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula-- and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of

its size: L.A.

New York City

The term 'The Big Apple' was coined by touring jazz musicians of the 1930s who used the slang expression 'apple' for any town or city.Therefore, to play New York Cityis to play the big time - The

Big Apple.

There are more Irish in New York City than in Dublin , Ireland ;

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more Italians in New York City than in Rome , Italy ;

and more Jews in New York City than in Tel Aviv , Israel ....

Ohio

There are no natural lakes in the state of Ohio , every one is

manmade.

Pitcairn Island

The smallest island with country status is Pitcairn in Polyne-

sia , at just 1.75 sq. miles/4,53 sq. km.

Rome

The first city to reach a population of 1 million people

was Rome , Italy in 133 B.C. There is a city called Rome on every continent.

Siberia

Siberia contains more than 25% of the world's forests.

S.M.O.M.

The actual smallest sovereign entity in the world is the

Sovereign Military Order of Malta (S.M.O.M). It is locat-ed in the city of Rome , Italy, has an area of two tennis courts and, as of 2001, has a population of 80 -- 20 less people than the Vatican … It is a sovereign entity under

international law, just as the Vatican is.

Sahara Desert

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In the Sahara Desert , there is a town named Tidikelt , Algeria, which did not receive a drop of rain for ten years. Technically though, the driest place on Earth is in the valleys of the Antarctic near Ross Island ..

There has been no rainfall there for two million years.

Spain

Spain literally means 'the land of rabbits'.

St. Paul , Minnesota

St. Paul , Minnesota , was originally called Pig's Eye

after a man named Pierre 'Pig's Eye' Parrantwho set up the first business there.

Roads

Chances that a road is unpaved:

in the US.A. . = 1%; in Canada = ....75%

Russia

The deepest hole ever drilled by man is the

Kola Superdeep Borehole, in Russia.It reached a depth of 12,261 meters(about 40,226 feet or 7.62 miles) It was drilled for scientific researchand gave up some unexpected discov-eries,one of which was a huge deposit of hydrogen- so mas-sive that the mud coming from the holewas boiling with it.

United States

The Eisenhower interstate system requires that one mile in every five must be straight.

These straight sections are usable as airstrips in times of war or other emergencies.

Waterfalls

The water of Angel Falls (the world's highest) in

Venezuela drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).

They are 15 times higher than Niagara Falls ...

I have always said, you should learn something new every day. Unfortunately, many of us are at that age where what we learn today, we forget

tomorrow.

But, give it a shot anyway!

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Rotary International Theme 2012/13

That’s all Folks !- but remember, we are t he Rotary Club of

the 21st Century

Other Websites Swindon Phoenix supports & recommends to our readers

http://www.stanleystravels.co.uk ………. http://www.swindonepilepsy.org.uk

http://www.rotary-ribi.org/districts/homepage.php?DistrictNo=1100

Thanks to Peter Newson of Marlbro’ Club for this one

Finally two more pictures of the

Phoenix ending the Wonderful GB

Olympics (pictures taken from the

telly by your editor! )

Really very Proud to be a member

of both;

GB and Phoenix!