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POLAR NEWS - No. 50 September 2008 |
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FROM YOUR EDITOR Many thanks to Fiona for her Coldingham article and to Fiona Jeff and Brian for their photos WELCOME A warm welcome to new Polars Drs Nick Booth and Lesley Kay fromthe Hexham area, Bob and Elsie Howe from Haltwhistle, Barry and Jean Smith from Padiham, Lancs, Aeneas McGhie from Kilmarnock, James McLaughlan from Linlithgow and Alison McLean from Grangemouth. Hope to meet you soon. |
ZOE'S PLACE
PRESENTATION
Eileen Middleton, Nurse Manager of Zoe’s Place, Middlesborough receives a £600 cheque from Polar Bear Brian Short. This was made up of the £540 from Polar lunch raffles and generous donations from the Mandate Chapter (a member was on the last Highland Fling)- topped up by the SBMC committee. Some of the children from Zoe’s place enjoyed the presentation - especially the one having
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COLDINGHAM GALA I do like attending events which do not require too early a start on a Sunday morning! Mike and I set off from Edinburgh at 9.45 am, me in the MGA Roadster and Mike in the estate bringing up the rear with all the club paraphernalia and a multitude of bears. Our aim was to arrive at Coldingham for 11 am and had there not been a navigational misunderstanding which took us up a single track road, through a ford and up a hillclimb in thick fog we would have been early for once. Pulling into the local showground we were delighted to see that Karen’s silver Porsche was already parked next to Mary-Jane’s blue Ace while Jeff’s silver Ace was parked next to George’s blue Morgan.  All were adorned by brightly coloured bears! Sheila and Karen had, after some negotiation, relieved a local trader of all his bears for what can only be described as a very competitive price and they were now for sale on our stand at £3 – a healthy profit. We were shortly joined by Andrew in his blue TVR and, for a bit of welcome contrast, Neil in his bright red Teal Bugatti type 35. He too had a minor detour in reaching Coldingham despite his having written the instructions clearly on paper and attached them to a clipboard mounted on the dash – who needs a satnav? The stand was quickly erected and bears attractively displayed. The sun came out and along with it the public came through the gates. They were very generous – most of the bears were sold by the end of the afternoon while our Cool Wall of Dream Ride cars was a good fund raiser as well as a welcome talking point and sales pitch for next year. The Gala itself consisted of good family entertainment – a blue-haired Elvis impersonator, a folk band, show rides, bouncy castle, refreshment tent and local stalls. The car display was greatly enhanced this year by one of our Bears, Martin Whitelaw, bringing along fellow members of the Porsche club who made an early morning run of  it
to Coldingham then spent the rest of the day relaxing in the sunshine.
Organiser, Jeff Ferris, was surprised/delighted to find that his own car
was sporting a red 1st award rosette when he returned to it. No-one was
quite sure what the award was for but it clearly reflected the amount of
interest shown throughout the day in his car. This informal show raised an
amazing £321.86 with a top-up donation expected from the organising
committee. Well done to all the Polars who supported the event and made it
a most enjoyable day in each other’s company. - Fiona |
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TEDDY BEARS' PICNIC AT CULZEAN - AUTOCLASSICA 2008
Well, what a great show - and it was sunny too! The show was ambitious but very successful, with various upmarket events like the Historic Rally Driving Test/Stages and the serious Octane Concours. Then there was a huge entry of individual cars and car clubs, along with fun events like the Soap Box GP and live 50s music/dance shows. We were in the retro area, which meant your dress had to be appropriate to the age of your car and most people took this very seriously - which was good fun and let you see some amazing sights. There was a ‘street concours’ for cars that had
actually been driven to the event and an ordinary area with clubs t We had our stand up for two days - 11 cars on the
Saturday, including West Midland Bears Simon and Steph Brookes in their
BMW 335D, who were on holiday in the area. On the Sunday, we had a good
turnout of 14 cars - with a couple of extra Porsches from the Porsche
Club. Mike McCormick from Stirling and Julian Foster from Kinross also
popped in to say “Hello”. We were raising funds by selling the bears,
However, the ‘star cars’
for small boys were Neil’s Teal Bugatti and
Mike’s Ferrari Dino -
both
of them disappeared off with wee lads grinning from ear to ear and stayed
away for so long, I was getting worried we’d be up on kidnapping charges!
(I think they got invited to join one of the other
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A GOOD DEED At Culzean the crowds were entertained by the FIB Children's Theatre Group who paraded around in costumes between performances. The costumes were of a Teddy Bear and a Bumble Bee. We decided to reward them with a parade lap ride, which is how Andrew came to have a giant Teddy in his TVR.
CONGRATULATIONS 1 Janet tells us that membership has now reached 500 - so congratulations to all who attend shows and encourage new people to join the SBMC.
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CONGRATULATIONS 2 David Bruce picked up a prize with his TVR “Wedge” at the combined TVR and MG event at Alford Transport Museum last month.
CONGRATULATIONS 3 Fiona picked up a prize at the Historic Wheels show at Brodie, Morayshire, last month. She also met up with Dick and Pat Nortcliffe and Mike and Kathleen Rasmussen, some of our most northerly Polar Bears
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Autoclassica Fashion
Hats for the Ladies
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 Hot-pants for the girls |
 Cravats for the Gentlemen |
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hat
didn’t dress up - plus the autojumble and trade stands. Andrew had managed
to get us a prime site, right at the gate where people were coming and
going - so Joe Public couldn’t miss us. Our theme was a ‘Teddy Bears'
Picnic’ and the Teddy Bears were tucking into assorted food (it kept
disappearing, so someone was eating it) and getting ‘fallingabout- drunk’
- see photo! 
rattling
cans and getting donations for a run in the car of your choice - the
organisers had agreed that we could tag onto the parade runs round the
castle grounds. These only lasted about 5 minutes but were every hour and
the donations offered ranged from the £2.50 of a wee boy’s pocket money to
£20 from fond parents. Andrew set the ball rolling by selling the largest
Teddy Bear for £20 and a ride in his TVR for £10 - to the same woman!
Jeff’s AC Ace was popular, as was Bob’s Cobra and the two TVRs.
parades
going on.) Johny “Porsche” got a marshall's rebuke for uncharacteristic
overenthusiatic use of the throttle on the parade lap. Andrew, Fiona,
Mike, Mary-Jane and Helen W were good at rattling the cans and we all sold
a steady stream of bears and rides - but it was Aly and Fiona who ‘stood
in for Sheila’ in the last two hours of the
Sunday and managed to sell all the remaining
bears! We raised £150 on the Saturday (the quiet day) and £400 on the
Sunday, which is of course, a total of £550. Wonderful! 
