It has been a while since my last post and a lot has happened since then. It is hard to explain all of what has happened but writing this blog post might help me.I have had to attend too many funerals recently. It started with my Godfather's wife. I had known Ron all my life and he was an amazing man. Jean I had known for more years than I care to remember. Like my parents they were both in education, in fact Ron was responsible for training so many future head teachers that shaped education at the start of this century. Whilst Ron died a number of years ago, Jean kept in touch and as a family we would visit her when ever we could. Even though she had her own serious health issues she kept as active as she could and would always good something special when we visited. Sadly she lost her battle and is now reunited with Ron. And I am sure the two of them are enjoying a glass or two of wine with mum and dad.

I have also attended two funeral of Lion friends. It is a sad fact that the current membership of Lion in the UK is declining due to the high average age and a lack of recruiting younger members. We might have a solution, but more of that later.

The sadest event was the death of a very close friend. She and her husband had become probably my best friends over the last upteen years. We would meet for lunch and a beer every couple of weeks. We would talk, or WhatsApp, every day and at the start of Covid a timely phone call, from them, resulted in me still being around to write this blog. She was diagnosed with cancer just over 4 years ago. She fought it and appeared to have kicked it's a**e. Sadly it came back in two new forms. Just at the point when it appeared that one of these was under control another cancer was discovered. Sadly this was too much and she passed away peacefully in mid-August. I was so fortunate to visit the day before she passed to see her. I did not say goodbye, just that I would see her again.
I miss you Kay more than you will ever know. I will make sure Dave and Amy are okay moving forward. ❤️❤️

Fortunately it has not all been sad news, and there have been some positive highlights.

I was able to spend a day volunteering at the Cerebral Palsy National Athletics Championships. It was great to catch-up with athletes, officals and CP staff members who I have not seen for a year. Everytime I help at a CP event it amazes me just how people cope with their disabilities, different abilities.

I have been a Lion for nearly 38 years and over that time I have seen so many life-changing projects performed by Lions across the world. But I think the latest project we are starting to under take could be the most life-changing yet.

• Did you know that most parents do not take their children for eye tests? It is free to all children in full-time education. As adults we know when our eyesight changes, but when did you last hear a child say "mummy my eyes are funny"?
• One in every 6000 children see the world upside down in one, or both eyes.
• Many child behaviour issues could be down to poor eyesight.
• If a child's sight issues are not diagnosed by the age of 8 it is less likely that they can be corrected and so they may have to wear glasses for life.

As Lions we have a plan. We are working with education authorites, health care groups and schools to screen every child in the early years (reception) classes. From this we hope to offer the same screening to all children of a primary school age. This screening is free and by using state of the art cameras typically takes less than 30 seconds to screen a child. In the pilot programme we screened some 500 children across 3 schools and 10% were referred to get a full eye examination. One child went from needing a personnal teaching assistant to being on the top 1% of gifted children as a result of our screening. He couldn't see the whiteboard so just played up and caused trouble.

As an added bonus we will get the name Lions and what we do out to a new generation of people and hopefully some will become Lions.

This project WILL change lives.

I have written this blog post to help me get over a tough few months, but the future looks brighter and exciting.