BETHANY/TALAKAG HAVE THEIR FOOTBALL KIT.

The players wearing their East Kilbride strips.

The players wearing their East Durham (Peterlee) strips.

The players with their Scottish Daily Record strips.

When we were last back in the UK attending our daughter’s graduation our visit coincided with our good friends and former neighbours Doreen and Billy Jarvis’s annual Garden Party. The party is given to honour the birthday of their daughter Dawn and provide a good knees up for friends and neighbours. Back to the story, when attending the said party I bumped into an acquaintance of mine Mr Billy Davies who is the Facilities Manager at Shotton Hall in Peterlee which doubles as the HQ of the Peterlee Council as well as some of the best function facilities in the area of East Durham. During my time as CE of my former company I used the Shotton Hall facilities on numerous occasion therefore getting to know Billy Davies quite well or so I thought. We got chatting about retirement and what I was doing in the Philippines etc when I mentioned to him our need for football kit as Bethany/Talakag were so keen to play football (Soccer).
Billy said he would see what he could do to help and we left it at that and got back to drinking the other Billy’s beer, well after all that’s why we were there in the first place.
Two weeks later I got a call from Doreen Jarvis to inform me that there was a bag of football kit at her house to be collected. By now we had moved house to Durham and we needed to go to Peterlee that afternoon so we said we would drop by and collect the kit. When we arrived at the Jarvis residence immediately I saw the bag of kit it was enormous it had a note on the top to say there was no one at home just help yourself. Marilou and I struggled to get the bag in the car and had a further struggle to get the bag into our apartment. When we opened the bag we were overwhelmed with the amount of football kit it contained and the only way we were going to get it to Talakag was by shipping it in a Balikbayan box. So it was back in contact with our shipper and after a struggle we managed to get the boxes packed and collected and on there way to Talakag.
As I mentioned in an earlier post the boxes had already arrived in Talakag and yesterday we had the handover of all the football kit to Pastor Melchor Gabitano and Mr Arquillano who organize and train the youth teams in Talakag. They were so grateful for the kindness of our UK friends in sending the kit which delighted everyone and in the photographs this is reflected by the smiles on the young player’s faces.
Once again a massive thank you to Paul and Debbie Kinghorn who run East Kilbride Rovers and East Kilbride Youths as well as Billy Davies from East Durham( Peterlee) Youth Football Team for their overwhelming kindness in donating to Bethany/Talakag so much football kit. I also would like to mention Guy Millen formerly of Durham University Business School for his individual contribution of football boots and tops to be used by our Bethany/Talakag players.
Last but by no means least I would like to thank Meriam and her long suffering other half Brent back in Scotland who got the ball rolling for me and Billy and Doreen without who’s garden party I would not have bumped into Billy Davies.
If I have missed anyone out who contributed to making the above happen then it is in no way intentional and I humbly apologise in advance and thank them profusely in arrears.