Ian Smith had recently moved to the Livingston area and discovered there was no Round Table in his new home town.

Unfortunately like many Livingston Round Table was originally started in 1978 however disbanded in December 1999.

He approached myself (Simon Aston) about setting up a local Round Table and after listening to what it was all about I was enthused and the two of us set aboutresurrecting Livingston Round Table, this process started in April 2009. 

Ian made contact with David Weaver who leads the Central Membership & Development Team keeping in constant contact and given his knowledge and experience he kept us right on track and made sure we were doing all the right things, when we were ready to do so.  We were also supported by Colin Williams our Regional Representative who was also a great support throughout the process taking time out to come and visit me in my office to ensure the application for the re-charter was spot on before sending into Marchesi House.

With little money but bags of enthusiasm, myself and Ian decided the best way of kicking off Round Table in Livingston was a high profile cleaning of the 'Welcome to Livingston' sign just off theM8 motorway at Livingston and passed by around 85,000 vehicles a day. This took place on Sunday 5th April 2009, receiving media attention through the local newspapers and Radio Scotland. 

It was a start but we needed members!!  Simple – go around to houses in our area and start knocking on doors as well as speaking to friends.  Straight away this created interest and we started to have our regular business meetings.  After a few comings and goings we started to get regulars.  We gave ourselves a target of 10 members.

Christmas was coming and we needed a sleigh.  The first donation we made was to our local Scout group in Livingston, giving them £50 for sports equipment, they in return donated a caravan base to build a Christmas Santa's Sleigh on!!

We had never built a sleigh so who could build it????  I knew our local prison Addiewell!! (for the right reasons so don't go there) we gave them a template and they built us our first ever Santa's Sleigh built by the prison inmates. 

In December 2009 the Livingston Round Table Santa Sleigh hit the Livingston area.  We contacted people to help us collect and over 5 nights raised nearly £2,500.  It was a great experience to bring this back to Livingston and our local community after so many years away.  From our Santa Sleigh we got 4 additional members, hitting our target of 10 and with another transferring from another Round Table had 11. 

This year we plan to be out 8 nights as to visit even more of our community throughout the Livingston area, we really want to ensure that as many children & their parents know about our Santa Sleigh and just as importantly know about the Livingston Round Table and what Round Table is really about.

Livingston Round Table was officially re-charted on 1st April 2010 where 10 members were inducted by the then National President Dave ‘Sharky’ Barker and a great night was had by all especially David Weaver who won a nice bottle of Scotch Whisky which he duly shared with all - of course he drank the most!

Our members are aged between 21 and 41 and come from all sorts of backgrounds, proving a great mix and dynamics for us.  We've raised awareness through gala days (face painting), bag packing and we now even have a Beer Festival planned for June 2011 which we hope will become an annual Round Table event.

It only takes a couple of people to start a Round Table and our community and indeed ourselves as the Members are better for having one!

Simon Aston

Livingston Round Table Chairman

Mob: 07789 535 822

E-mail: the.astons@btinternet.com