Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2014 | Page 52

THE HIGH SHERIFF

High Sheriff's Diary

coffee
break

by Claire Locke

reading...

Keep posted
on what our
High Sheriff
has been up
to recently...

I

t has been a busy but very interesting
couple of months, with my duties
including meeting the Duke of Kent,
who was on the Island to present two
Queen’s Awards. The first was to Inflight
Peripherals, based in Shalfleet at the
former Artigiano building, who won the
Queen’s Award for Industry. They make
accessories for inflight entertainment
on planes, and are a very fast-growing
company, and a fine example of a world
class engineering business. The Duke’s
second presentation was the Queen’s
Award for Voluntary Service to the Isle of
Wight Society for the Blind. My visit there
was very inspiring as they have so many
wonderful volunteers who help with the
work they do for the blind and visually
impaired on the Island.

I

attended the re-opening at the new
venue of the Donald McGill Postcard
Museum in Ryde, which has relocated
from Union Street into the Ryde Heritage
Centre. There are hundreds of postcards

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and they are absolutely fascinating;
in their day some were deemed to be
obscene and were banned, although
today we would probably only describe
them as saucy! They are incredibly
amusing, and the museum is well worth
a visit. There was also an exhibition
of World war I photographs and
memorabilia, which tied in nicely to the
recent Centenary commemoration.

Square to Square Ride to raise money
for Help for Heroes and the Isle of Wight
Branch of the Motor Neurone Disease
Association. The eight cyclists rode
1,400 miles in 14 days from Newport
to Santander in Spain. T hey had been
training for months, and I had to admire
them for their effort and determination
in cycling 100 miles each day to raise
funds for two very good causes.

I

I

presented the prizes at the Yarmouth
Carnival Harbour Sports. It was a
wonderful afternoon with all sorts of
racing in the harbour, involving adults
and children in some very amusing
costumes. The races included ‘dirty shirts’,
‘blindfolded’, single-handed, double
rowing and traditional paddle races. It
was a very entertaining event!

I

was delighted to go into Newport to
see off the cyclists who took part in the

was asked to open the new Methodist
Church in Freshwater, accompanied
by Vera Brignall, who I understand is the
eldest parishioner. The Methodist Church
formerly had two sites in Freshwater,
but it is now a modern, new church, and
is the most wonderful building. Unlike
a traditional church with fixed pews,
everything is moveable. So when it is not
being used for worship it is a community
space for the congregation, which can be
used every day, and in my opinion could
be the template for churches of the future.