Email from Karen - sent 27th March 2020

Hi everyone

I hope you all keeping as safe as possible.

I know people are getting frustrated and agitated at being at home but hoping some of the suggestions below may help to motivate and encourage.

Follow the link and watch the video. Then I would you to send me a video of members doing a copy version. I will put it on to the web site, as no doubt it will give us a few smiles. Parents – that includes you guys. Get grandmas and grand fathers onto the case too.

Dancing prime minister from Love Actually

I am looking for inspirations for our gallery on the web site and for Facebook.

I am looking for videos of members exercising – can be any form of exercise and the recordings needs to be no more than 60 secs. You can send me more than one.

Have a look at our compilation so far.

Currently, I have received stuff from Jamie, Scott, Violet, William, Corey, Anna and Dan and Emily with a tail, and Poppy. That’s not many compared to the membership, so come on folks, send in your exercise routines.

There is a land training set uploaded under Gallery, under Boredom Busters you can follow if unsure. I would also like some videos of individual’s doing their roller work. Those who attended Llandudno or attend land training on a Sunday, will be fully aware of how to complete roller work, so get rollering guys and send in the video recordings.

I would like some drawings or models of the Morris centre pool, there is photo on the web site under learn to swim to help with this, or you are welcome to work from memory. I know there are couple of you making models on Minecraft, but what about out of Lego, cardboard, string and glue (sorry mums but I see the breakfast cereal boxes disappearing out of the cupboard here), or even PlayDoh.

• what I like about swimming with Birmingham Marlins
• what happened whilst I was swimming

There are a couple already on the web site, thank you William and Poppy. It will always help with literacy skills, as I am aware motivating youngsters or even teenagers to complete a piece of writing can be difficult. Everything I receive will go onto the web site.

How about some cake making with a photo of the finished product? I know that Hannah, Jess and Clara are very good at producing swimming pool cakes 😊 I will put the photos onto the gallery as well

All swim, land training and gym sessions are currently closed until further notice. I am sorry but we need to stay safe and stay at home. I will keep you all updated with opening information as and when I have the information. We are hoping for a May re opening if not before, but we are very much in the hands of government and others.

There will be no payments taken for April 2020 from any member who has set up their Direct Debit. However, we do need everyone to set up their direct debit by following the link below. Please be assured that no payments will be taken until we re open.

If you have not paid for March 2020, you will need to do so and please communicate this to Alex our treasurer in relation to this.

£15 membership fee also needs to be paid, so again if not already done so, can you please make arrangements with Alex for a BACS payment. We have several members on our current listing who have not yet paid this. Can you please do so? I am aware of the 2 families who have emailed to inform us that they will be joining BM when we re open.

Members who have already paid and are now owed by BM

For those swimmers who have paid for the full 12 months in advance, your next payment in 2021 will take into account the missing month of no swimming (i.e. April 2020) Please rest assured that an adjustment will be made when you next payment is due.

For those in learn to swim Marlins 1,2,3, we are aware that you are owed two weekends of swimming due to the close down before the end of March. We will endeavour to recover this time for you once we re-open. We will be looking at providing 2 extra sessions at some point but until circumstances have changed, we cannot currently plan for this.

The T-shirt and bags order has now been sent off and I have received acknowledgement of the order. However, the ordering and the government announcement to close all non-essential retailers overlapped, and as a consequence, the order has been received but not yet processed. There will be a delay which is out of everyone’s hands.

The hat order has also been delayed. I have been in communication with the hat suppliers, and then had got the printer set up ready to go when the announcement was made. As soon as they are able to re-open, then we are first on the list. Every member who has paid £15 membership will receive one free hat as part of that membership.

Currently all programmed competitions until September have been cancelled with the exception of Len Badcock meet. This meet is still scheduled to go ahead, although at this time, I have not yet decided whether to take the team. It will depend on what training opportunity we will have prior to the event. I do suspect that this will also be cancelled but will make a decision when things are little clearer and more settled.

Cancelled competitions now include Summer Nationals in July, so anyone who has got a hotel booked for this event, I strongly advise you to cancel it before you have to pay for it.

We maybe looking at running a NTRASC course when we are re -open – if anyone is interested in completing this, please let me know. You must be 16 years old to do this course. Please note, it is not NPLQ course so once qualified, it will not allow you to work at public sessions. It will only allow you to lifeguard at closed sessions (such as club training sessions) If you are already a lifeguard and maybe interested in doing some lifeguarding shifts for us, again let me know.

We did manage to complete our planned committee meeting on Wednesday this week, thanks to modern day technology and to Manish. We are currently working toward our Stronger Affiliation Swim Mark and thank you to Judy and Dave for their help on this. It is not easy to gather the relevant documents, ensure they are correct and valid, and then have SE authenticate. It has taken many weeks to get this far but hopefully, we are still on target for June submission.

The minutes from this will be uploaded onto the web site (we are members club and therefore, you can read the minutes and we welcome any feedback or future agenda items you may wish to have discussed)

We have made a decision to run an in-house championship but the date and format for this has yet to be confirmed. However, it will be open to all members and cost will be £5 per person.

We have also booked the hotel for Llandudno swim camp 2021, looked at staffing for this and what training needs to take place. We have discussed individual needs of some of our members and how we can best meet those needs to allow individuals to attend in some format. Planning for this swim camp starts about now and even though we are currently closed, the work behind the scenes continues. The price for this camp will be £250 per person, the same as this year, to ensure that all costs are covered, including staffing costs. We do not make a profit from this camp and it is not used as a fund-raising exercise.

Just to say Get Well Georgina – we are all sending you our best wishes.

Regards to all and keep safe.

Karen - Head Coach, Birmingham Marlins