Decision time for Wick gala-comment

It’s make-your-mind-up time for Wick's wonderful gala

THE future of Wick gala hangs by a thread. As you may know, the leading office bearers, chairwoman Lorna Ross, treasurer Janice Campbell, secretary Heather Miller and minutes secretary, Heather Martin resigned at a poorly attended AGM recently.
No-one can say they haven’t done their bit, with up to 20 years of individual service. Repeated calls for volunteers have fallen on stony ground, over the years, but, despite that, they, and handful of helpers, have soldiered on, year in, year out, to maintain Wick’s biggest event of the year. It’s very much a case of the willing horses getting the heaviest loads and that’s part of a malaise in Wick where those who strive to keep organisations such as the street party, the floral baskets committee, the Christmas lights committee etc are left to small groups to keep them functioning and, in order to do so, it sometimes serving on more than one group.
The Wick gala is a popular event, steeped in history, having been the successor to the Herring Queen pageant. It’more that a festival, though, but part of the town’s identity and goodness knows enough of that has been eroded with regionalisation. The gala is part of Wick’s character and heritage and, I would suggest, is an extra special, case....Wickers return home for it...and above all, it’s a source of fun, a week in which we can forget our woes for a while and enjoy ourselves. In addition, it simultaneously generates much-needed cash to finance improvement that would otherwise be beyond the reach of our purse, particularly so in these harsh economic times.
So, it’s make or break time. Do you want your gala or not? Tonight sees date the crunch EGM at 7pm in Wick Assembly Rooms. I can pre-empt an early response: “If you think the gala’s so important, Noel, why don’t you go to the meeting and join the committee”.
I refer to the words of that rather rude version of the song “She’ll be coming round the mountains when she comes” which goes “I will, if you will, so will I”.
Can’t say fairer than that. The committee needs at least 20 to run the gala comfortably and new blood with new ideas would be welcome. Now, if that figure was upped, you could have pool of volunteers and organise a rota under which a member would be involved, say one year in two or three, which is surely not an excessive commitment. Is it?
The bottom line is... if you want your gala, then you must be prepared to do some work for it. The days of a skeleton group struggling to keep the event going, year after year, after year, are over.