Pendle Lodge of Freemasons

You can always expect a few nerves to creep into any opening performance, and the first outing for the current Pendle Lodge officers was exactly that. There’s nothing wrong with having a few butterflies as this always keeps you focused and on the ball.

The first ceremony of the season was a Passing for Bro Ritchie Smith who conducted himself well during the ceremony, or at least as well as he could, bearing in mind he had no idea what was to come. The team had a fair amount of ritual to learn over the Christmas Period  and the hard work paid dividends, which was evident during the ceremony. One or two hiccups interrupted the flow, but these were your typical first time errors that happen at almost every first outing, nothing to worry about. I’m sure everyone learnt from the experience and filed it away for future use.

I always look toward the Inner Guard on first performances, as this is truly his first time taking part in any ceremony. It’s a litmus test of what is to come from the Junior Brethren and gives a good indication as to the strength of the future Lodge Officers. Bro Duxbury did well, as did all the other brethren taking part.

W.Bro David Biggs, one of the Grand Officers in the District was in attendance along with our District Chairman W.Bro Paul Thornton and 6 other visitors from various Lodges. Everyone gave their greetings and commented on the ceremony.

The Pendle Lodge Social board is always a goodly fayre of food and drink, the atmosphere was as always noisy, even with a few of our premier past masters away on holiday. Peter Christie raised the splendid amount of £80 in the raffle for a bottle of whisky by the numbers raffle, which seems to have been adopted enthusiastically by the brethren, as we always seem to do far better than with the traditional raffle tickets.

On the whole it was a good night with a good display of Craft Freemasonry, and I expect that all the officers involved in delivering the ritual were glad to get the first one under their belts as a team, and are looking forward to the Initiation ceremony in April.