POLAR NEWS   -  No. 46 February 2008
FROM YOUR EDITOR We'll be working up to our main fund-raising events - the Dream Rides at Thirlestane in June and the Highland Fling in October. I've included a photo of Nigel Stacey- Marks Bentley, above, that is coming to Thirlestane, just to whet your appetite. For the Human Touch, there is Dan Roberts sitting on his Dad's Morgan, reflecting on Life, the Universe and Everything!

Also, any contributions to the Polar News in the form of interesting articles or cash for printing will be very welcome. Many thanks to Brian Short, Tony and Iris and Jim Harris’ sale of tyre gauges - those donations were enough for another black, a large volume colour cartridge and 100 stamps. Great! --- Helen

 POLAR GATHERING Fiona and Mike combined their New Year Gathering with the CHAS presentation and had done their usual superb food. About 20 Polars had a lovely evening, chatting, eating far too much and enjoying the running joke that one Polar Bear was under the misapprehension that another Polar Bear was pregnant! After the presentation, we all tried to find the 41 song titles that Jeff and Mary- Jane had inserted into their "GT40 at the NEC" article. This ended up with a tie between Bill and Karen and Brian and Helen. Bill and Karen then won the tie breaker and the bottle of Glayva in the raffle! A good time was had by all and many thanks go to Mike and Fiona.
SACHD PRESENTATION Jim Kelman from SACHD received a cheque from Fiona at Stanley House last month - the proceeds from the Selkirk show and lunch time raffles was made up to £1,000 by the Committee. The following is an extract from Jim's thank you letter: "On behalf of SACHD can I once again express my thanks to all SBMC members for their very generous and welcome donation of £1,000. Having received money for the last two years this award was quite unexpected. It was kind of you to think of us once again and we appreciate your continued support. In the past year SACHD have been able to donate £11,000 to the Borders General Hospital Child Health Department, for the purchase of a "State of the art" child dummy with full resuscitation facilities, including ECG monitoring and paddles, for use in resuscitation training courses, as well as six much needed 24 hour ECG Cardio monitors. In addition we have continued to make cash donations to families through the Social Work Departments at Edinburgh Sick Kids and Glasgow Yorkhill. We have also sponsored Teenage and Young Adult weekend activity breaks, giving youngsters the opportunity to meet and socialise with others who have a congenital heart condition. We can only do these things through the efforts of our members and the support of organisations like yours. I thank you once again for your generosity and wish SBMC and particularly Polar Bears, every success in the future."

 

WELCOME

 A good welcome to new Polar Bears Alan Anderson from Renfrew, Philip Bennett from Sheffield, Michele and Darren Huddart from Shipley and Tony Panesar from Leeds. Hope you’re not too far away for us to meet you sometime!

 

CELEBRATION

Cathy Catchpole celebrates a significant birthday in March - hope Pete takes you somewhere nice! Belated birthday wishes to Sheila Dodds as well.
SPRING LUNCH

28 Polars and 2 guests enjoyed their lunch on a gorgeous spring day, donated generously to the raffle (£170) and Jim’s sale of tyre gauges on behalf of the Polar News and then got down to the business part .

Thirlestane Dream Rides on June 1st: We are aiming at 25 cars and have a good selection already - including more of the Microcars that were so popular last year. We are planning on having lunch at the Black Bull at 12 noon on Saturday 31st May, prior to setting up the stand area ready for Sunday - so if you can help out, see you there (let Fiona know if you want lunch).

 

  If any of the newer Polar Bears would like a high quality Dream Rides Sweat Shirt (£25) - please contact Fiona Davies at 0131 552 2972 or YSY705@aol.com. The charities to benefit from Thirlestane will be REACT and SACHD. Classic Cars at Corbridge on July 6th: Contact Bob Selby at 0191 489 1980 or js002d2541@blueyonder.co.uk We’ll be selling bears to raise funds for St Oswald’s Jigsaw Appeal and George and Sheila have organised a ‘High Tea’ after the show - only 3 miles down the road. Coldingham Gala on July 27th: Jeff Ferris gave details of this family orientated gala day - contact him if you want to go at 018907 71621 or red-mist@live.co.uk Autoclassica at Culzean on August 23/24: Andrew Carrie showed the promotional DVD and this is billed as a ‘Scottish Goodwood Revival’ and although it is a two day event, we can be there for one or two days - whichever we want. We hope participants will dress appropriately to the period of their car and we plan to have a ‘Teddy Bears Picnic’ theme - we are getting the stand for free but there will be an entry fee of £6 per car. Check out the website at www.culzeanautoclassica.com and contact Andrew Carrie at 01506 410846 or andrew.carrie@blueyonder.co.uk Highland Fling Tour on October 10-13: Only 5 rooms left! Contact Fiona Davies. After discussion t was agreed that Kevin and Sandy Talbot’s Accommodation Suggestion should be passed to the SBMC Committee for their consideration. Fiona also informed us that the James Rennie School is now an approved charity. The Sporting Bears 20th Birthday Celebration in 2009 - Jim Harris suggested combining the dinner with an organised event like the Silverstone Classic or Oulton Park Gold Cup. This would make the trip down south more worthwhile and hopefully more Polars would come. Fiona to pass this suggestion onto the committee.
 
CAR NEWS George’s new Morgan gets the once over at Otterburn. Martin and Angela Kent turned up in their Ferrari "Daytona" which we hope to see at Thirlestane.

 

The Ferrari has also volunteered for a surprise task - more news later in the year. Mary-Jane Ferris has got rid of her Lotus and is awaiting delivery of an AC Ace, similar to Jeff's. Anyone beat a pair of Aces? You will be interested to hear that Jeff's Ace is proving to be as trouble-free as the GT40! Jeff says he feels another article coming on!
THE HAZARDS OF MODERN CARS If you own one of those top of the range cars filled with annoying, expensive, glitchy, electronic gizmos - then heed this story from a Polar Bear who owns a high spec Peugeot 407. This sensor-heavy car, automatically switches on lights/wipers and checks the oil/tyre pressures - in case you’re too lazy or stupid to do it yourself. This particular Polar is neither and likes to manually check the oil and tyre pressures every month - given that he’ll do up to 1,000 miles in a week. So, after the Xmas Hols, he decides to check his tyre pressures, but can’t remove the valve cap. His metal tyre valves (with their fancy sensors) had metal valve caps and the two had become corroded together after the cold snap and salty roads. A squirt of WD40 and gentle pressure with pliers results in the valve shearing off and, whoosh, a completely flat tyre! He puts on the spare and heads for Farmer’s - who find all the valve caps are immovable and succeed in snapping another one off - so our Bear now has two flat tyres!! Four new tyre valves (at £75 a pop) are fitted - this time with plastic caps. His Pug now tells him he has four flat tyres - but, in spite of that, allows him to drive it to a helpful Peugeot dealer to get the on-board HAL reprogrammed - for another £30. All in all, a very expensive tyre check - at £330!!! And even if he hadn’t tried to check his tyres manually, he would still have had this problem the first time the sensors told him his pressures were low. So, the moral seems to be - a) just stick with the ordinary £2.50 tyre valves and check your tyres yourself - or b) if you already own one of these cars, make sure you fit plastic valve caps or slather the metal ones in copper slip.