Speaker Secretary Ian Rutter reports:
Our speaker this month was Vic Quayle.
When asked for a brief CV before the meeting, Vic provided a few enigmatic notes, which included, inter alia; ‘Won a Gold Medal in Rio’, ‘Broken a World Record’ and ‘Been attacked by a Cheetah and a Gorilla’.
However, his presentation to us was a little more prosaic, as his talk was entitled ‘Three Legs and No Tail by a Manxman’, and was an account of the history, the people and the engineering of the Isle of Man, his birthplace.
The island is self-governing and its legislature, the Tynwald, is the oldest continuous parliament in the world, having been established in 979 AD, (or thereabouts – the actual date is not known). On July 5th, Tynwald Day is ‘celebrated’ on the Isle of Man, being the day when all laws passed by the Tynwald during the previous 12 months are read to the population, so that no-one can claim ignorance of the law as a defence.
I have quite a few IOM stamps with Manx cats on them, but I was surprised when Vic told us that they were quite rare, (the cats, not the stamps!). Similarly, it was sad to learn of the plight of several of the little railways on the island.
Club member, David Mayne, gave the vote of thanks, expressing the members’ general appreciation of Vic’s talk. With a diverse range of talks in his portfolio, (and living in Guildford), we might well be seeing Vic again in the next year or two.
The gold medal in Rio? No, not the Olympics – a South American car rally. The world record? Another car rally, this time from Southern Spain to Northern Norway. The animals were in a private zoo in Weybridge, which Vic was inspecting in his role of Environmental Health Officer.