A New Year, New Resolutions and New Enthusiasm

I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year.  I love New Year – all that hard work of Christmas preparations is done, the days getting longer and Spring is on the horizon. It’s the time to plan our hopes and dreams and of course to have another look at those things that didn’t quite get finished last year!

With both Chris and Ken away last week there were not many meetings and I was able to get on with some fundraising.  I have put in several bids for the Studley Grange project, which we hope will get underway in the Spring.  Paul Lenaerts and I have been working on finding some funds for the Melksham Link to help with the studies that still need to be done.   The Pewsham Locks HLF team is putting together the Project Enquiry form which is the first stage of the bid to Heritage Lottery Fund to fund the restoration of the site at Pewsham, except for the Lock Cottage and Top Lock that are going to be done first.  MCC  fundraisers are putting in bids to the local Area Boards for scaffolding and fencing for Top Lock and for a new outboard motor for Damselfly.  You can probably tell that one of my resolutions is to do more fundraising in 2015.

One of your blog team’s resolutions is to try to use modern communications more and cut out some of those time consuming meetings.  So much easier to sit at your desk and have a video conference instead of driving miles to meet up.  You can share documents if necessary, in fact it’s just like a meeting.

Events are being planned for this year. Following the successful River Festival at Melksham last September, we plan to link the River Festival with the Melksham Food Festival this year. Again it is the first weekend in September – more details in a few weeks. Keep that weekend free!

 Now that the Trust Events team of Doug and John are back, we should have a good presence once again at the major canal shows.  I look forward to seeing their programme for the summer.

 Tonight the Peterborough Arms Steering Committee meets and will be discussing the plans for this year for the pub. On Wednesday night we have our regular monthly Finance and Admin committee meeting. These are two that have not gone electronic yet!

Kath Hatton