The Guild

Our meeting on November 4 was superb with more than 100 people in attendance from other Guilds and members of the public who wanted to hear our speaker. We shared the meeting with Troqueer Church Guild and Helen Teenan co-hosted with me. Helen knew the speaker personally and so it was appropriate that she introduced May Nicholson, who had travelled from Paisley to speak.

May founded the Preshal Trust in Govan, Glasgow, and told stories of her own troubles in life and how she has overcame them. She was brought up in Ferguslie Park in Paisley, in a family of 13 in a tenement building. At 15, she started to drink cheap wine with her friends and before long she was an alcoholic. May was often in trouble with the police, ending up in a mental hospital. When she was released the first thing she did was to go and get a bottle of cheap wine and get drunk.

Her mother gave her money to go and stay in the Channel Islands in the hope that would help her to recover her life, but she became involved in crime there. She settled in Blackpool and was sleeping rough when she phoned her mother asking for help. Her mother sent her money to get home to Paisley and greeted her with a roast dinner in the oven. May told the group that she felt like the Prodigal Son. Her mother told her she hated her sins but loved the sinner. However, May fell back into her old ways, until she attended a church meeting and a man prayed for her, saying: “Lord, we can all see she is filthy, touch her and clean her.”

Twenty-six years later, May has never touched another drop of alcohol and has devoted her life to working to help others in desperate need. She founded the trust, which is devoted to helping people in poverty, drug and alcohol addiction, low literacy and numeracy levels, depression and low self-esteem. May gave a wonderful account of her life story and brought with her many things for sale made by prisoners in Cornton Vale plus a book on her life, Miracles from Mayhem. A retiral collection of £222 was donated to May for her work.

On November 18, we were again thrilled to have more than 100 people in attendance. I co-hosted this meeting with Mary McLeod, convener at Maxwelltown West Guild. I held aloft a blue rose as I read: “There is so much beauty in this wondrous blue rose, if only we could capture it within our very souls. If we could take its beauty and apply the glow within, search a little deeper in the soul beneath our skin. Take what it stands for and shed its love abroad, don’t hide the glow within you, but share the love of God. You know you can’t touch beauty without it rubbing off on you, and spreading it to others in the kindness that you do. There lies within each one of us, the beauty like this rose, when it’s used in touching others, then its beauty overflows.”

Mary McLeod announced our entertainment for our social evening. The Annan Singers are well known for the wonderful entertainment they provide and they did not disappoint.

Christmas dinner is in the Woodlands Hotel on December 16 – 7pm for dining at 7.30pm. Donations in an envelope will be collected in aid of Guild charities.

Catherine Nicholson, convener