ROTARIAN partners, friends and Inner Wheel members were welcomed by president Sheila Girvan to the club's annual "Gentlemen's Evening" which was recently held at The Moat House in Kings Coughton.

The speaker for the evening was Rotarian Peter Robinson, who entertained everyone with a humorous account of his life in the navy as a young man in the 1940s during wartime. He described his travels around the world on HMS Hermione, which included invading countries and being torpedoed. Despite all this, he still can't swim!

He concluded his talk by announcing that in July this year the ship's patron, HRH Prince Charles, had invited him and other members of the old Hermione Association to a reception at Buckingham Palace.

It was to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of the war and to acknowledge and thank the men for the work they had done. A fitting end to his navy career.