Club President Jim Cox warmly welcomed John Cotton, attending his first meeting as a guest of Pat Sparrow, having seen our reports in the Journal recently. Clive Allen, on behalf of the Club, thanked George Bourne for his gift of our new audio system and Bob Young for his handsome donation of a special award – a Quaich (a Scottish friendship cup) for outstanding service to the club.

We then sat back to listen to Dr Brian Bertram, the world renowned zoologist and evolutionary biologist. Brian was Director General of Slimbridge, having succeeded Sir Peter Scott and has held posts at Bristol Zoo and the Zoological Society of London. He is now retired, lives near Stroud and celebrates his 70th birthday next week.

The subject of his presentation was the Ostrich and he described in detail these large flightless African birds and their eggs. He interspersed his talk with a variety of slides and hilarious anecdotes, including a blasphemous anagram of the word ostrich which is “O Christ”! We learned so much in just a short time; not least that ostriches do not bury their heads in sand, that their eggs hatch in just 42 days, and that only 25 per cent survive the incubation period. The egg is incredibly strong – as he and his wife demonstrated by balancing, rather attractively dressed, on top of one.

It was really good to have such a widely travelled, and very funny expert at one of our meetings. Following numerous questions, David Lee thanked Brian, and as Nigel Jenkins said afterwards “this was the best talk I’ve heard since joining the Club”.

Afterwards, John Doyle astounded us with his many happy duties this week, which involved the church, the operatic society and family responsibilities. We commiserated with the advice that the trouble with retirement is that you don’t get a day off!

We meet every Thursday at 10am at the Ecgwins Club in Evesham.

Chris Donough