Bonnie Scotland Tent
at fifty
WILLIE McINTYRE investigates
Tom Hawton kindly hired and drove a mini bus with ten members of the Bonnie Scotland Tent and Call of the Cuckoos Tent to the annual Convention in Norwich. Vice Sheik Willie Black spiced up the journey with a series of his quizzes, won overall by Grand Sheik Janice. He even gave me a voice-altering kit!
I arrived home a few days later with two pairs of torn trousers and a cut arm (the reasons for which are unknown) so I concluded that I had had a great time.
A photo appeared online of me being presented with an award by Emma Perry, saying that it was in connection with the Bonnie Scotland Tent being fifty years old that day (3rd May). Not so! It was simply for winning an unskilled dice game of chance called Another Dice Mess! Sad to say, the fact that the Bonnie Scotland Tent was celebrating its fiftieth birthday was given no mention in awards nor in any announcements, as far as I know.
The Bonnie Scotland Tent had their own fiftieth birthday celebration at the convention. The line-up of members in the photo above includes the present Grand Sheik Janice Hawton (front row, second left) and past Grand Sheik Fred Terris (back row, extreme right). Vice Sheik Willie Black is first on the left in the back row. I am standing beside Fred. The tent’s other (past) Grand Sheik, absent from the convention, is Alan Ellsworth, who keeps in touch with us and was in fact my successor in the tent when I stepped down (for a rest) in 1986.
Alan, Janice and Fred have much to be proud of, so Stan and Ollie are giving them special awards herewith…
Alan Janice Fred
At the Convention, tent members shared all sorts of memories of past achievements and looked forward gleefully to future ones, especially the up-coming Spiff Up in Glasgow.
