CHAIRMAN

John Parker

Tel. 07970 568425

DEPUTY CHAIRMAN

Martin Harris

Tel. 07720 823364

SECRETARY

Allan (Mac) Black

Tel. 07512 022949

TREASURER

Duncan Pickard

Tel. 01334 870203

TALK CONVENOR

Graeme Hogg

Tel. 01334 653043

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Jim Lawrence

David Martin

Maurice Shepherd

David Sinclair

ASSIST. TALK CONVENOR

Bill Bowman

TALK RECORDERS

Jim Lawrence

Tony Miklinski

Brian Murray

Graham Pirie

MEMBERS PAGE

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Next Meeting...

Wednesday

27th May 2026

10.00am

'The Tay Bridge Disaster'

Presenter - Mhairi Sheils

Club News

Secretary email: macblack.author@gmail.com

It may have been a slightly delayed start to the meeting in Castlehill Community Hall on 13th May, but there was total agreement that it was well worth waiting for. Chairman, John Parker was pleased to welcome our speaker for the day, Lynda Colston who would be making us aware of someone who became a close family friend, Dave Speers, the subject of her talk 'The Violin Maker'. Lynda is from Leven, now retired, and was awarded an MBE in 2021 for her work in the DWP on a Mental Health Project.

There was nother visitor, who was very welcome and who intends to join the club!

Would you like to join us?

New members will be very welcome, so, if you are someone who has retired and you are looking for something to do on Wednesday mornings, please contact our Secretary or, better still, pop-in to one of our meetings. If you know of someone, encourage them to attend.

Our next meeting will be on 27th May and the speaker will be Mhairi Sheils. Her talk is entitled 'The Tay Bridge Disaster'. We hope to see you there!

The Violin Maker

This week’s presenter Lynda Colston gave us the history of a true local Fife hero, a Joiner turned Violin Maker named Dave Speers. Originally from a Lower Largo family, Dave was born in 1917. He became a Joiner, later serving as a Dispatch Rider in the Army from 1939-1945 as part of the famous ‘Desert Rats’ North Africa campaign. After the War Dave resumed his trade as Joiner working with a Leslie based firm. He never married, but looked after his ageing Mother. At some point he heard about a young girl, learning the violin, who had had her instrument taken away from her and was quite upset. So Dave decided to make her a violin. He scrounged old pieces of wood from house refurbishments and seasoned them in his bath. Children at one time thought he was a poacher as he would be seen hiding old pieces of wood under his coat. Lynda’s own family came to know Dave well for his gentle kindly manner and he became a sort of ‘adopted Grandfather’ to them. An early advocate of recycling Dave was well known for searching Skips for bits of suitable old wood. Over the years he made some 200 quality violins and had them all mounted on the walls at home. But Dave himself admitted he could not play a note. In 1994 Dave was featured on the Noel Edmunds TV show, when Burntisland Parish Church was the venue for a surprise performance when the Scottish National Violin Orchestra played every one of Dave’s violins. Lynda said that when fetching Dave’s violins from the house for this performance, they missed an additional 10 Viola’s he had made as they were hidden in a black plastic bag under his bed. On another occasion Dave was donated a piano made of walnut, but he burned the outer walnut as he wanted the piano’s interior wood to make more violins. Sadly Dave died in 2002 at the age of 85 and his violins were lost for some years. But they were gradually tracked down and nowadays his legacy lives on as his violins are now used by schools across Scotland to introduce youngsters to music. Lynda now tells Dave’s story to remind us of the musical legacy of a quiet gentle man who deserves his place in Fife’s musical history.

Jim Lawrence