To kill a duck

At our Lions business meeting last night we received a report from David about the children's outing to the pantomime. This actually took place in December but he was absent from last month's meeting. Apparently it all went swimmingly.

We have been organising two outing a year for children. The one in the summer is to a reasonably near zoo and then it's a pantomime at Christmas. The original idea was that these should be for disadvantaged children, children who might otherwise not have an outing. At first, we relied on the social services people to provide a list of names and addresses. Unfortunately, it became apparent that many of these were the people who yelled the loudest and were not necessarily particularly needy or disadvantaged. We gave the matter some thought and decided that school teachers were probably the best people to provide names of needy children. But, of course, they wouldn't. The answer was to provide an outing for a whole class (or year group) thereby covering the disadvantaged even though it meant that some of the beneficiaries were not. But if we chose a school in the poorer part of town, there was a good chance that a large proportion of the children would be the ones we wanted to help.

Unfortunately, I think David has lost sight of the original idea. Certainly few of the children who were taken to the pantomime could be said to come from needy families. (I do have the advantage of inside knowledge as my granddaughter attends this school.) This was demonstrated when the school took up a collection at the Christmas concert and sent the Lions a cheque for over £300! Somehow we really must try to get David back on track.

This will be made even more difficult for me as he has provided a report to be published in Jungle Jottings, the club's newsletter which is edited by me. His report is crying out not just for editing but for rewriting completely. I could try to make a few minor changes - but if I start I will end up doing a full rewrite. It would make JJ look better but might not sit so well with David.

What the heck, publish as written: it will all be forgotten in a month's time anyway - and I should be looking to build up, not destroy.

To finish on a lighter note. Some years ago the summer outing was to a playground-cum-activity centre. One of the boys, only about 4' 6" tall but 10 years old, claimed he had been pushed into the pond by a duck. After consoling him, one of the Lions suggested he should sit in the sun for a while to dry off. No fear, he said. He was "going back to kill that b..... duck!"