I was invited to the Rotary Hereward Club s Christmas dinner last week and shared a very enjoyable few hours at The Cutter in Ely in very good company. We also managed to raise £90 on the raffle for Breast Cancer Care, which is not bad going. If you were

I was invited to the Rotary Hereward Club's Christmas dinner last week and shared a very enjoyable few hours at The Cutter in Ely in very good company.

We also managed to raise £90 on the raffle for Breast Cancer Care, which is not bad going. If you were in the pub last Wednesday, I hope you enjoyed our rendition of the 12 Days Of Christmas, which was extremely good fun, but admittedly out of tune in one or two places.

Both the city's rotary clubs join forces over the Christmas period to organise the Christmas Carol float (see Page 3 for details of route) that makes its way around the city in the lead-up to Christmas. The Rotary volunteers are out in all weathers to ensure that the children of Ely get to see Santa and also raise some money for charity. So if you see them out in the cold one night soon, swinging their buckets, please make a donation and perhaps even hand out some warm crumpets and drinking chocolate.

The Ely Christmas Lights Switch-on was a huge success on Friday and after all the hard work it was good to see so many people had made the effort to attend the event. I know I mentioned it last week, but I really do want to pass on my congratulations to Ian Newstead from Ely Lions, Mark Peters from Star Radio and also Mike Chinery-Colyer and Nigel Clark from the Ely Lights Brigade who all worked so hard to make it such a superb event.

It's the Ely Standard 2008 Sports Awards tonight (Thursday) and everyone here is very excited. I think sport and the impact it can have on people's lives is sometimes underrated. It is a great leveller in society and it can allow youngsters who might otherwise struggle for recognition in other aspects of school life to shine. One of the things that has become obvious during the last few weeks, is not so much the sporting talent that we have in East Cambridgeshire, but the number of individuals and groups there are out there who are organising, encouraging, supporting and fund-raising so that other people can take part in sport. All the winners will be published on our website on Friday and also in next week's paper and I hope you will enjoy reading the stories behind the entries as much as I have.