Thank you to everyone who attended our Volunteer Support Meeting at our new venue on Wednesday 2nd May.

The Oak Tree Centre at Shenley Brook End provided us with a lovely, sunny and airy venue for our latest meeting.  On this occasion we were continuing our 30th Anniversary Year celebrations and it was lovely to catch up with old friends and introduce some newer volunteers.

After an introduction from Judy Smith, our chairperson, Liz Roe gave us a very entertaining insight into the early days of the service as one of the founders, describing the challenges of matching people from a spare bedroom.  The first Service Users were a pair of twin sisters who wanted help with their Christmas cards.  The second was our very own Paula Suchy!  The Transcription Service was introduced as a remote reader for people requiring access to meeting minutes, etc. and steadily braille and audio cassettes were produced as needed.  After approximately 4 years the cultural access service was introduced to facilitate theatre trips and gallery visits.  The whole ethos of the service has always been to assist visually impaired people achieve a level of independence.

Mention was made and heartfelt thanks expressed to Milton Keynes Community Foundation and later Milton Keynes Council without whose support and funding  we simply could not exist.

This was followed by a rather challenging quiz, centred on 1988, our founding year set by Terry Calvert who clearly had a penchant for the sporting events of the day.  The discussions and debates generated a lively atmosphere and we are delighted to announce that the able coupling of Dave Bown and Carol Latham emerged victorious with a score of 23/30.  They were duly rewarded with some chocolate hob-nobs – the biscuit of the year in 1988!

The tea, coffee and cakes were ably distributed by (From L-R), Christine Merriman, Anne Pollard, Liz Le Voi and Barbara Burgess.

Thank you to Hilary Robertson and Jenny Shan for keeping our registers in order and Martin Lycett for the audio system.