....and finally

 12/10/2021

....and finally a few words of reflection and summary about the past couple of years.

I am not going to write a report, or indeed a summary of all the events and activities I was involved with (or missed). Rather I shall try to write about my feelings, experiences of being OMC President during these hopefully highly unusual times.

When I was approached about taking on the role I was initially reluctant. I couldn't see how this fitted with my personality and indeed what I saw myself doing during this phase of life. However, after much thought, persuasion and discussion with Angela I decided to accept and give it a go. We also thought that it would be quite fun to both be Presidents of our respective clubs/societies at the same time (Angela is President of Corona Worldwide a charity focusing on friendship and community to women both at home and abroad).

Having accepted the role I had more than a year, including as VP, before assuming the role. I joined the OMC Committee and got to know what was happening within the Club and then decided what I wanted to do during my term.  I knew from the outset that if I took the role that I would give it whatever it needed - I don't do things by half!

I knew that I wanted to do some travelling and that Angela would be happy to accompany me and turn the journeys into holidays. We couldn't go everywhere and decided on two sweeps: Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong; New York and Toronto. Each of these locations held memories for us related to previous visits during our long international career. I also wanted to continue supporting Dick Lidwell on his careers sub-committee, and of course to attend as many professional and regional events as I could.

Everything started brightly following the Annual Dinner of 2019. I attended a number of events during the Autumn and was honoured to represent the Club at the Remembrance Day parade and service which really is impressive and all OMs should try to attend at least once. 

SO...all was going well and we headed off down-under. Out flight took us through Hong Kong as we had tickets with Cathay Pacific, and all seemed quite normal. However, by the time we arrive in Sydney having spent a couple of weeks travelling in Australia, I knew in my "bones" that we wouldn't be spending time in Hong Kong  - the virus was already causing restrictions there. So as soon as we arrived ni Auckland, I changed our tickets to enable us to fly home from New Zealand, transiting in Hong Kong airport but not staying.

Our 3 week stay in NZ was unaffected by the growing crisis, but even then we know that special measures were likely. I remember buying our first masks in New Zealand ready to wear them on the trip home which we did for much of the time. Even so, I could not have imagined the scale of what was to come and how that would impact my Presidential duties.

Throughout the pandemic I (like everyone else) assumed that we would be back to normal "soonish". Therefore I retained a good measure of optimism. However, I am also a realist and I don't tend to overly worry about things that I have no control over. I tried to focus as far as the Presidency was concerned on the things that I could do and contribute to. Hence, I focused along with others on making and maintaining contact via online meetings. These actually went very well and all of us became quite expert in using this format to keep agendas moving forward. In that sense I was quite satisfied that I/we had done all that we could.

Well into my second year and once it became clear that things would reopen I was delighted to get involved with the OM activities throughout the latter part of summer 2021, culminating in a most successful annual dinner.

Now that I have passed the chain of office to John Gallagher, I can look back at the whole experience with a sense of pride at having kept things going through the pandemic, but also a small sense of frustration at what might have been.

Bu, it's time to move on to whatever comes next and I shall happily continue with my OM interactions.

To those of you who might actually read this I say; thank you for sticking with it and for your support.