Hi Guys
The university in Aberdeen asked me to do a presentation to three classes of school children on Thursday 12th of February for the Charles Darwin project they had organised. A great deal has changed since then for the good of our sport.
First of all the local papers were asked to attend and spent 2½ hours taking photographs of the children and of the pigeons. They informed me it would be in the paper on Friday with photographs of the children. Each class was presented with a cake to take back to the school which was made in Edinburgh and had Charles Darwin’s portrait made out if icing. They also had a girl from London who wrote a book about Darwin to explain events to the children. All in all, I was very disappointed the paper decided to cut most it of at the last moment and printed a small feature. My wife Marlene posted out the photographs I had taken to all the fanciers I know explaining that it would be in the press on Friday then had to send more information out to say the article had been cut and she was most disappointed.
Paul Thomson (Blue Chequer Pied) posted on Pigeon Basics a thank you to Marlene and myself to which I replied saying how disappointed we were with the Aberdeen Journals’ report and the fact we could only put up one bird in the Kingslea 1 Loft Race for the three schools. The teachers and children were delighted with this donation, a pigeon of their own to be entered into the race for them and hopefully win some money for their school. This means it will be in front of the children from each school for eight weeks while it is racing. The first to respond was pigeonguy147 with a donation of ten pounds. This started the ball rolling and I now have had donations from:
Blue Chequer Pied, Robbiedoo, WB Masson, Bob Whyte, Jimmy White, Bugie (£20),
John Norris, Elsie & Kevin Elliot, Sammy, IB, Aly Mac, Black W F, T-T,
JakJak (£20), Davy McCallister (£50)
This enables me to give four schools a fully paid up entry to the race.
The schools are:
St Peters Primary
Kittybrewster Primary
Riverbank Primary
Woodside Primary
The university run a school information bus that travels round all the local schools promoting natural history and they also have been given a fully paid up entry into the race. I informed the university today and they were shocked and delighted that the pigeon fanciers were so generous. This snowballed after I informed you of my disappointment but has been totally turned round to the pigeon fanciers benefit in promoting the sport.
The university and I wish you all the best for 2009 and THANKS for your support.
Ian
ps I have enclosed the link to the Web site supplied by Richard Sandison
http://www.kingslea1loftrace.co.uk/
