Scottish Clans Association AGM and dinner

I have been attending the Scottish Clans Association (Auckland District) monthly committee meetings for about 4 months as a representative for Clan Cameron.  In doing so, I have been active in one of the latest initiatives, the scholarship, I have also discussed with some of the committee members the state of getting young people involved with Scottish culture.

I have effectively put my head up and have been noticed and at the recent AGM I was elected vice president.  I am not sure what this is going to mean moving forward, I don’t really want the responsibility of something like this. I already have the Clan Cameron presidency coming up next year so I need to make sure that I am on track for that.

In saying this, there maybe a lot of overlap between the two organisations and it could be beneficial to be in both.  I was thinking about maybe checking out the RNZPBA Auckland centre for similar reasons, so maybe me being here is not a bad idea.  I will give it some thought and observe how the committee interacts with each other over the next year and see where this may take me.

On top of the AGM last weekend I performed the piping duties for annual dinner which was straight after.  This was a lot of fun, not as intense as I thought it was going to be. I had a small piece at the start of the night to get everyone to sit down at the tables, I had come up with a 5 minute piece but was cut short early as it was not all needed.

I then had to pipe the guests to the main table, a short piece with not to much hassle.

The Haggis was a bit late, and I had the piping duties for this.  Malcolm Campbell was running the show for this, he gave the ode and showed the ropes to us who had not done it before.  Christine Binns, the associations represenitive for clan Matheson, was right behind me in charge of carrying the Haggis. 

I was informed that I needed to snake around, so I had already worked out my route, however, when executing my circuit, I came across a sort of roadblock where a woman facing the table didn’t see me right behind her while I was trying to get round her.  I pushed through, it was a bit rough however the rest of the party made it upto the front without any issue. Apart from that it seemed to go pretty well.

Final responsibility was to pipe out the main table at the end of the night. All in all a great night, I got to see some Clan Cameron members as well as some other people who I will probably need to keep in my circles moving forward.