Today's lunch was presided over by President Angela ably assisted by Mr. Paul Young in charge of Fellowship and Sergeant at Arms Franz who managed to collect $810 in donations and $220 from the raffle for a total of $1030.

Franz announced that the Annual Ball will be held on the 21st of May and tickets will be available next week.

Tobi kindly introduced our speaker for this week Mr. Hendrick Docken who hails from Tobi's home town of Bad Homburg.

Hendrick embarked on his true life's work on being evicted from his town flat after carrying out extensive, enhancing renovations while having only a "Gentleman's agreement" contract. Unfortunately his landlord turned out not to be of that Ilk. However, having informed the town Mayor of his travails he was offered a dilapidated mountain cottage which given his habit of working 16 hours a day with a running chainsaw turned out to be a blessing for himself as well as his neighbours. Using only naturally fallen trees Hendrick developed the technique of 3D wood graffiti in which he encouraged the world's most renowned graffiti artists to participate by spraying their own minds images on to the raw wood before allowing Hendrick to follow their spray markings with a chainsaw to form 3D images. In 2004 Hendrick was awarded the National crime Prevention prize in Germany for taking the graffiti craze off the streets and giving it an outlet in a truly artistic setting. This particular artistic pursuit is known as "Schnitzing" and you are invited to learn more about it at www.schnitzing.com .

We must thank Tobi for his effort and perseverance in getting this particularly interesting speaker to come and share his insights with us.