The FCV annual Christmas party took place at the Vibast Centre again this year with entertainment supplied by the ever popular Steve Broughton. More than 60 people enjoyed a very delicious lunch and a great party. We were delighted that Her Worship, the Mayor of Islington, was able to attend and found time to speak to all the people attending.

Andrew Thompson took the opportunity to thank the 50 FCV volunteers who have provided over 16,500 hours of volunteering across a range of services in the last year.

“We come in all shapes and sizes, ages, background, nationality and ethnicities but we share a common desire to help our neighbours in the community,” he said.

Once again the party was supported by MUSI and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, both parts of the MUFG (Mitsubishi) Group. They provided a small mountain of presents for the clients to take away with them, with surplus presents subsequently being distributed to clients unable to attend the event. It is a very generous contribution that makes it a very special Christmas for our clients. In addition, they also sent a lovely, enthusiastic and hardworking team of volunteers to the party. Many thanks indeed to everyone involved from MUFG.

We would like to thank Dalziel Pow, a local design agency, law firm Axiom and the Group Legal Department of Lloyds Banking Group for their donations to FCV this Christmas.

We have no ‘trust fund’ and rely entirely on third party support to provide necessary funds so we can continue to supply our services to the isolated and vulnerable members of our community.

Many thanks to them all for their very kind support, which is greatly appreciated.

We were delighted that Arcelor Mittal sent a team of volunteers to our lunch club to provide a hugely enjoyable Christmas lunch for the clients. Alcelor Mittal is the world’s leading integrated steel and mining company and is best known to the general public for supplying the Arcelor Mittal Orbit to the Olympic Park. It is the UK’s tallest sculpture and was designed by Anish Kapoor and Cecil Balmond.

This is their first visit to lunch club and it was a great success with the clients as their team were brilliant at chatting and entertaining the clients as well as providing a very delicious lunch. Many thanks to them for their support.

Yet again Claire Brown led an energetic team of charming people from Bwin to provide a Christmas lunch for our clients. As a novel twist they decided a meal of ‘bangers and mash’ would make a refreshing change from the standard turkey and trimmings Christmas lunch and that turned out to be an inspired idea as that old favourite was greatly enjoyed by everyone.

Bwin are very popular and generous supporters of our lunch club and we want to thank Claire and all her volunteers for their contribution during the year and to wish them a very Merry Christmas.

Another few months of life experience and an almost fully fit first team helped to power FCV into 9^th position (out of 42) in the latest Rotary Club quiz night, held at the Whittington Hospital. This was our best result to date as we slowly climb the ladder towards the Championship position.

We were caught out by the dingbat:  ‘wether’.

(Answer: ‘a bad spell of weather’ – how did we miss that one…)