POLAR NEWS   -  No. 49 July 2008

FROM YOUR EDITOR

The Scotsperson Motoring Section tells us the Japanese have produced a foot-high Robot Bear that tells motorists where to go - that is, gives them directions like a Satnag. An added bonus is that it can point the way too! For the safety conscious, the Bear is also programmed to detect alcohol and will ask “Have you been drinking?” If it detects harsh acceleration or sudden braking it will warn you to “Watch out!” and presumably it will advise you if you’re breaking the speed limit as well. Sounds like a must for any selfrespecting Sporting Bear - do you think they’ll do one for the UK?

WELCOME

A warm welcome to new members Sid and Eleanor Palmer from Hawick and Julian Foster from Kinross. We hope to meet you again soon at one of our events.

The SBMC committee have ‘topped up’ our efforts at Thirlestane Castle, so that SACHD and REACT will each receive £1000. Fantastic! Jim Kelman from SACHD and Mo Grant from REACT received their cheques at Fiona’s last week. A list of those donations gift-aided was also handed over.

This was superbly organised by Fiona and there were 25 cars on the day - ranging from the tiny Scootacar to the lovely big old Bentley, through loadsa Porsches and Ferraris to the very, very wide Lamborghini Countach. The Lambo and the Lotus Esprit spent the night in our drive at Roslin - to the great delight of my nephew from Holland and the utter amazement of the lad next door’s pals - one nearly drove his Clio into the fence he was so busy rubber-necking the exotica! Anyway, several of us set up the stand on the glorious, sunny Saturday and it still looked good on the cooler, greyer Sunday. Brian S was in charge of the garage area, helped by Jim, Pete, Sally with Andrew as driver liaison. Aly was MC on the booking desk, aided and abetted by Wendy, Cathy, Iris and Helen W. Ann D, Keith and Angela were refreshing the drivers while Pat, Dick, Martin W, Mary-Jane and Ann S were Cool Walling. Both Anns, Mary-Jane and Sally did a fair amount of bucket rattling too. Brian K and myself helped out in the afternoon - after we’d done our bit on the MG stand. One thing I noticed during my spell on the desk, was that the punters knew what it was all about and came looking for us - excitedly discussing which car they were going to go out in this year. However, the appalling weather (it starting to rain heavily and persistently after lunch) meant we had to close at about 2.30pm - which was a shame as we’d been steadily busy up to that point. In spite of that, we managed 51 rides which raised £1375 and the Cool Wall and donations on the day raised another  £300.

This could have been much more if the weather had allowed us the extra couple of hours. Out of the Bears’ cars, James’ Countach was the most popular ride and would have continued to rake in the money, if rain hadn’t stopped play. Also very popular was Gerry’s Aston Martin DB7 Volante, Martin’s Ferrari Daytona and Steven’s Porsche 966 Turbo Tiptronic S. Out of the non-Bears who had offered their cars, the Ferrari 355 and the Modena 360 were popular, as were the Micro Cars. The Cool Wall was initially set up on the garage boundary by Dick and Pat Nortcliffe, only to be moved under cover when the rain started. Photos and details of performance of all the Dream Ride cars were displayed and members of the public asked to make a 50p donation to get a blue dot to vote for their coolest car.

It soon became apparent that one young lad was using his money to vote repeatedly for his Dad’s Morgan – or was it his Dad’s money? He thought that the Ferraris were his biggest threat. Later in the day some tactical voting by the family of a Porsche driver ensured that the 996 Turbo Tiptronic S was voted the coolest car. Several Polars enjoyed themselves manning the Cool Wall and I think we should repeat this next year as it has great fund-raising potential. I must say again how kind and generous everyone has been - all the helpers and drivers giving up their Sunday and not minding that they and their lovely cars got very, very wet. Even people only loosely connected with the Dream Rides have been generous - Neil with the Teal Bugatti Type 35 reported that his tyre supplier (Ostles Tyres in Galashiels) had not only taken care with balancing the large wheels on the Teal, but also donated £25 towards the Dream Rides and Fiona’s downstairs neighbour also donated £10. Great Stuff!

What can I say about Corbridge? Ably organised by Bob Selby and a lovely show, but shame about the weather! We had an uneventful drive down - Brian K in his MG V8 with the trailer of stand stuff, me in the MG ZR, stuffed to the gunnels with bears, Fiona (MGA) and Mike (MR2), Tony and Iris in their MG TF and Andrew and David in their TVRs - meeting up with Bob and Ann (Cobra), George and Sheila (Morgan), Jeff and Mary-Jane (AC Ace) and Martin K with his Ferrari Daytona. Everyone mucked in and we set up both the Bears and the Edinburgh MG stand in double quick time - well, we wanted the shelter afforded by the gazebo and the pavilion! The bears were laid out attractively, got some hard sell and the buckets were rattled. There was a reasonable turn out of Joe Public, in spite of the rain and they donated generously and bought quite a few bears too - sometimes with considerable enthusiasm. I’d been rummaging in a bag full of assorted soft toys and came up with an ‘orrible orange-coloured South Park hooded figure - don’t ask which one. A young lad’s eyes lit up and he was most insistent he buy the toy - perhaps my quip that if you squeezed it, it would say the F word was the clincher. Anyway, Fiona relieved the lad of his pocket money and he went off a happy chappy - until he discovered it didn’t say the F word! We raised a sopping wet (literally) £383.15 for St Oswald’s and had a good time - in spite of the rain. There were some very nice Classic Cars on show, a raffle, a dog agility display (fortunately during a brief sunny spell), a firefighting display plus several stalls for other charities and, most importantly, decent toilets! A local brass band provided some stirring music during the afternoon as well. The bonus was that we won some prizes too - Martin Kent’s Ferrari won the “car the sponsor would most like to take home” and our stand got joint first with the Edinburgh MG Club - Wonderful! George had kindly organised a High Tea at the Duke of Wellington pub about a mile up the road, so we all had a most pleasant meal there, before driving home in the rain.