dimanche 19 avril 2015

Spring Newsletter 2015


SPRING NEWSLETTER 2015


Play reading

Another successful Foal evening with an excellent turnout. Many thanks to the people who made it possible, Katharine Claringbull for directing, Caroline Di Miceli and Adam Gauci for taking the two roles, Philippe Marchand, our organiser par excellence and Phil Claringbull.

Thank you

We forgot to thank you in the last newsletter for the generous contributions to the raffle at Christmas, the quiz and the play reading. (208€ for the former, 200€ for the latter)

The monies we raise at these events go towards the purchase of books and into the war chest for when we get permanent premises and will need to equip them.

 Party and AGM  20th June for FOAL members

 I hope this date is already in your diaries, it is a big event for FOAL ; 5 years already despite all the vicissitudes we have encountered, we are still going from strength to strength.

The party will take place at 256 rue des Grèzes in Montpellier. You are invited for 11.30 so that we can hold a brief Annual General Meeting before moving on to the festivities.

To get to the venue which is a large garden and swimming pool kindly provided by Françoise Sorro : Rue des Grèzes is a street just opposite Celleneuve. To get to the Rue des Grezes the best thing is to take l'avenue de la Liberté and follow the direction La Paillade / Millau. You go past le Géant Casino which is on the right (going towards Millau). Keep on going a little further but you cannot turn left when you see the Lidl. You need to turn right as if you were entering Celleneuve to be able to cross l'Avenue de la Liberté. There is a sort of  half circle that enables you to do this. The Lidl is just on the corner. You go up this road and Françoise Sorro’s house is 256 metres from the bottom on the right. It has a white gate. Bus n°7direction La Martelle, get off on the last stop but one and the stop is practically in front of the house.

Deadline for signing up : 20th May to foal@dbmail.com When you sign up, please indicate whether you will be bringing sweet or savory dishes; FOAL will be providing the drinks and there will be music and maybe dancing ? It goes without saying that spouses are welcome.

 CD and DVD sale

We don’t have enough space in our current premises to hold the permanent book sale but a recent clear-out of my CDs gave me an idea. I don’t really want to get up at 5am to go to a flea maket and sell them and I thought we could have two or three boxes of CDs which we would sell for 2.50apiece to raise money for the book fund. I have already taken mine to the library and maybe you could also do some spring cleaning and bring along CDs you don’t listen to any more. We can also do this with DVD’s


Treasurer

The association is looking for a new treasurer. This is a crucial role but certainly not as daunting as you might think. Apart from the day to day bookkeeping (which is reduced to a minimum in a small association like ours, especially as we will have harmonised dues at the beginning of January 2016), the only other task is the preparation of a profit and loss account and a balance sheet for the AGM and the grant application. Former treasurers and myself will gladly give advice about this. We would rather have someone who is prepared to do this on a longish term basis (a few years) because ; one, practice makes perfect and two, changing the treasurer within the association entails quite a lot of red tape which we would prefer to avoid.

If none of you feels up to the task, maybe you know someone who would be happy to do so and become, if only nominally, a member of the board.  Please send an email to foal@dbmail.com about this.