When a speaker arrives with a large suitcase one has to wonder what is going to happen!  Does he intend to stay over to save driving home after a very long talk?  Maybe he has a ventriloquists dummy?  Has he been thrown out by his other half?

Fortunately it was none of those things!  Peter was here to talk about the RNLI but without the benefit of a laptop and projector.  Instead, he relied on his personality, anecdotes and a few props to delight his audience as he expounded on the history of this amazing organisation manned by volunteers and funded by public donations.

£4.50 per second is required to keep it going.  A snap of the fingers, £4.50, snap, £4.50, snap £4.50.  By my calculation that’s about £141,000,000 per year!  The outfit alone for each lifeboatman costs £1400!

When the alarm goes off volunteers rush to the lifeboat station, the coxswain picks his crew and they then have two minutes to don the gear and be in position.  Out of the suitcase came over-trousers, jacket, helmet, life jacket; so all that was needed now was a volunteer to leave the room and see if he could get ready in 2 minutes.  One of our younger members (assisted by his wife) volunteered and returned about 3 minutes later looking ready for action!  Thanks Martin.

A most enjoyable and entertaining evening, an antidote to the formality of the AGM which preceded it and a few seconds of running costs from the collection in the RNLI helmet!