In December last, the Viscountess Hawarden was chairman of the Central London Women's Committee 150th anniversary Lifeboat and Mermaid Ball at the Dorchester Hotel. The event was graced by the presence of the Duke and Duchess of Kent and the evening was a tremendous success; not only was it a very happy occasion, but to date over £15,000 has been received with more monies yet to come. At the other end of the scale, the committee organised a children's party in a church hall during the Easter holidays, making a profit of over £50; more than 60 five-to-nine year olds were entertained by Smartie Artie the clown and partook of a hearty tea—• all home baked by the committee and their friends.

Two small children at Horton in Gower carried their cat in a basket around the village inviting people to guess its weight—and they made £4.70 for the lifeboats.Southampton Lifeboat Board raised no less than £8,293.53 in 1974 for headquarters' funds and the Hampshire Rose appeal. A tombola at the Polygon Hotel dinner dance in April raised £460; the star prize, a cruise for two in Reinadel- Mar given by Union Castle Mail Steamship Co., was won by Eric Pearman who elected to put it up for auction, thus raising an additional £230.

A wine auction organised by Scrases Wines Ltd. at the Royal Southern Yacht Club raised £534; lifeboat week and flag day resulted in a record £1,292.71; £3,515 was taken at Southampton Boat Show in September; and £276.58 was raised by a raffle (first prize, an 150th anniversary Stuart Crystal chalice) at a new year's eve wine and cheese party in the Maritime Museum.

Exeter branch raised over £1,150 during 'The Year of the Lifeboat'. Of this amount, £339 came from a concert given in May in the Great Hall of Exeter University by the Devon and Cornwall Police Choir (Exeter District) and the band of HM Royal Marines; John Lawrenson was guest artist.Huddersfield ladies' guild has been enjoying a very successful venture into the realms of small auctions, with which they are replacing bring and buy stalls at coffee mornings. 'Lots' ranging from frozen foods, household goods, bric-abrac to as good as new clothes, are auctioned most successfully. At one recent function, attended by only 60 people, about £130 was raised.

A record-breaking contribution of £2,300 to headquarters' funds, equivalent to almost £1 per adult head of population, was achieved by Islay ladies' guild in 1974. The guild increased its membership substantially and ran a wide range of fund raising functions.

The main effort, lifeboat week in June, began with an inter-village ladies' football 'mini world cup' followed by a beetle drive, fashion show and garden opening and ended with a lifeboat day at Port Askaig station.

Lymington branch held an auction sale on April 5, and raised £370, including donations of £26.50. Auctioneers Michael Henry and Christopher Carr, both of Hewitt and Co., Lymington, sold 176 lots in about two hours, including such nautical items as winches, rope, fenders, paint, compasses and a marine radio transmitter, as well as pictures, books, furniture, carpets, garden implements, pot plants, and even a toboggan. The top price of £39 was paid for a handsome silver plated tray, while the lowest was 5p for a lady's handbag and a plate rack.

Among the 240 guests at Twickenham and District branch's 15th annual lifeboat ball were BBC television personalities Robert Keegan ('Softly Softly'), Arthur Lowe ('Dad's Army'), Fulton Mackay ('Colditz') and Trevor Bannister ('Are You Getting Enough?').

Members of Littlehampton lifeboatcrew were there, too, and first prize for the raffle, a holiday for two at Torremolinos, Spain, was won by Crew Member Michael Coombes. Nearly 600 tombola prizes, given by local tradespeople and businessmen, vanished in half an hour. After an enjoyable evening, the branch profited by over £500.

Michael Bainton, landlord of the New Inn, Wilmslow, Cheshire, has taken out an insurance policy on his life and given it to the RNLI; it is his tribute to the Bridlington lifeboatmen who saved his life when, at the age of ten, he and a friend capsized a hired rowing boat a mile and a half off shore.

Hakin Point branch, Milford Haven, inaugurated only last September, had by mid December handed over £1,000 to the Pembrokeshire 1974 RNLI appeal.

The new branch takes in a maritime community lying on the shores of Britain's busiest oil port and has close links with the harbour; its members include many seamen engaged in operating launches, tugs and trawlers. It reached its target with a series of events including a bazaar at which shellfish given by local lobster fishermen were on sale at a fish stall, and a gala French night for which prizes were donated by, among others, the French fisheries protection ship L'Agile.

Youngest model at a fashion show arranged by Newquay ladies guild at its local Woolworths was 3-months-old Claire Louise Bailey, daughter of Mr and Mrs Norman Bailey: her father is a crew member, her mother on the committee.

£85 was raised for the funds.

Other Newquay events last year included an Old Tyme Dance, picking and selling daffodils and a police choir concert.

Throughout the summer season the crew of Walton and Frinton lifeboat make a collection every Friday night at Martell Camp. Last year they gleaned more than ever before—over £290.

Haverfordwest County Secondary School raised £200 for their local branch with a variety concert which included music, verse, dancing and even fencing.

Several months' hard work went into the raising of £120 for the RNLI by Pontllanfraith Grammar Technical School; one prefect, Greg Murrow, even raised £7 by swallowing raw eggs. Yet more help from schools: pupils of Talbot County Combined School presented £280, raised on a sponsored walk, to the Mayor of Poole for his lifeboat appeal fund.

Keeping up the good work: children of Engayne County School, Upminster, clubbed together and raised £48.38 at their harvest festivals; and Fareham County Primary School recently handed Sir Alec Rose £429 for the Hampshire Rose Appeal—it had been raised by a 'spell-in' for which each child had to learn 20 words.

Before Christmas members of Cambridge branch, headed by Mrs O.

Peacock, worked a rota system to man the charity card shop in Cambridge, which holds the record in England for the highest proceeds: £12,000. £310.75, raised for RNLI cards, was handed over to the Cambridge branch.

H. Hayward of Portslade, Sussex, claims to have the only ladies RNLI uniform in the country. He first devised it for a fancy dress party at his local public house and since then, wearing it at lifeboat occasions, has collected over £100.

John Taylor, baths superintendent at Royton, Lancashire, raised £226 for his branch with a sponsored record-breaking motor cycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats: 14 hours, 45 minutes.

Next, in September, he organized a sponsored swim of children and guest celebrities, raising a further £300; the Scouts joined in too, and they made yet another £300 for the RNLI. Royton branch ladies helped with the checking in and also sold souvenirs. During 1974 two second-hand stalls set up in Royton market each produced over £50, and £22 was made from the sale of waste paper.

Last summer, in Cornwall, there were two sponsored raft races and one sponsored paddle for the RNLI. At Bude, four local men paddled inflatable dinghies down the whole length of the River Tamar and raised £461 for the Bude branch. The raft race at Truro, organised by Carey Homes Ltd. with the Truro branch, raised over £76, and the Buccaneer Inn, Gunnislake, handed £361 to the Tavistock branch as a result of a sponsored raft race, again on the River Tamar.

On Easter weekend a four-man crew from Pewsey Zixex Club, Wiltshire, rowing a 23' skiff, completed the journey from Pewsey Wharf to Pill Ferry, Bristol, in 15 hours 11 minutes, thus breaking the existing record by 47 minutes. As a result of sponsorship over £260 was raised for RNLI funds, bringing the club's total contribution from five rows to £750.

Anxious to play their full part in raising the cost of a boathouse for the station's ILB, Tenby crew, together with the local Round Table, have organised a series of aquatic sporting fixtures and rounders matches to be played against invited teams in the town's harbour and on the near-by beach. The first rounders match was played on Easter Sunday, when over £30 was collected from enthusiastic spectators who thronged vantage points to watch an excellent game.

Four ladies in the Bristol area, all over 80, one of them aged 88, regularly play cards each evening between tea and supper for modest stakes. Instead of retaining their winnings they pool them and send them to the RNLI.On March 15 ten Optimist dinghies provided by the Irish Yachting Association and crewed by IYA junior sailors of an average age of nine crossed the line at Heuston (Kingsbridge) in a race down the river Liffey to O'Connell Bridge.

The race, won by Mark Lyttle of the National Y.C. Dun Laoghaire, was sponsored by 11 Irish firms and, as a result, the RNLI benefited by £1,000.

Local sailing clubs and chandlers supplied rescue boats and other necessary equipment.

The ladies' guild of the small town of Borth made over £1,000 in 1974. One contribution, of £19, came from an ILB crew member, Peter Matthews; on the counter of his butcher's shop he keeps a lifeboat box for 'bones'.

Over £1,000 was collected for the RNLI by Folkstone Council with its 'Year of the Lifeboat' floral display: a magnificent bed had been planted with a full colour crest, lifeboat, crossed oars and an inscription.

A ship's captain who decided that he ought to reduce his weight at least to 16 stone persuaded his colleagues each to sponsor him for lOp per Ib lost; he has now turned in to the Belfast branch the results of his last two trips, £23 and £17. Belfast branch has also received £25 from James Tedford and Co., who have started charging 2p for local tide tables, previously given away, in aid of the RNLI.

At a North Chingford wine and cheese party shove-halfpenny (using lOp pieces) was played for a bottle of whisky placed on the dance floor.

West Drayton and Uxbridge branch, formed on November 11, 1974, achieved £923.13 in its first lifeboat week. New members welcome: write to honorary secretary, Mrs. B. A. B. Sobey, 486 Sipson Road, Sipson, West Drayton, Middlesex.Last December, North British Trust Hotels Ltd. presented a cheque for £5,000 to Lady Melgund (now the Countess of Minto), president of Hawick ladies' guild.

George Carpenter, whose pen name is George Windsor, is donating part of the income from his novel Nelson Lord— One Of Our Agents to King's Lynn ladies guild. The book is published by Arthur Stockwell and costs £2.50.

David Andrews of Stonehaven has made a lifeboat roundabout ouside his house and, over the past three years, has collected £326 for his local ILB station.

After raising £146 with a sponsored knit-in, the ladies of Stanmore branch made up the strips (all of one colour) into a blanket 80" x 48" which was presented to Southwold ILB station.In two days' trading at their 'new and nearly new shop' in an old butcher's shop on the Parade, Sutton Coldfield ladies' guild made £400, including an anonymous donation of £100. Customers were queueing up and had to be let into the shop in relays.

Eddy and Son, Helston, give away their old wallpaper sample books in return for a donation to their lifeboat collecting box of lOp—20p, according to the size of book.

Hoylake branch have received £280 raised by the local Soroptomists Club by a fashion show in November, and £323 from the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company's Neptune Swimming Club; 30 people took part in a sponsored swim, each swimmer completing as many length as possible in 15 minutes.

Last summer Ely (Cambs) Sailing Club held a party to raise money for the RNLI. It coincided with the salvage of a Fenland barge by a group of industrial archaeologists from Cambridge Museum of Technology; their leader was John Wilson, a Merchant Navy officer.

During the day members were taken out to see the barge, which was on an island in the middle of the lake which is their sailing water. £150 was raised.

During last September's gales, Poole lifeboat towed in auxiliary yacht Rose.

Her owner, M. J. Pulsford of Scarborough gave her to the RNLI, and her sale resulted in £430.

Robert and Maris Dupe of Wenvoe, Cardiff, have raised well over £900 for the RNLI in the past four years. The last cheque they handed over to Barry lifeboat station came from a clay pigeon shoot followed by a woodchopping competition—a race to cut off the tops of standing tree trunks; each competitor, armed only with an axe, climbs his 'tree', fitting plank steps as he goes, until he is high enough to start chopping off the top..