Down and down - then up a bit

Meeting Report

Tonight it was SCC’s turn to host the Crouch Shield P.I. Competition at the Steyning Centre. Daisy and Janet did the meeting, greeting and relieving attendees of their cash. Jean and Ian further removed money, by selling raffle tickets for the fine array of prizes. In the Kitchen, Anne was in charge of half time refreshments, ably assisted by Liz, Steve and Paul. Martin worked his usual magic with the sound and projection with the dulcet tones of Ray doing the announcing, (with an unusually deep voice due to a very recent cold ). What would our club do without Martin, I ask? 'Lang may his lum reek’ or whatever Burns said.

We were sponsored by Marrutt and Permajet who provided some generous prizes of vouchers and boxes of photographic papers.

Chairman Chris welcomed everyone and then handed over to the Chairman of the Regnum Crouch organisation, Alec Pelham, who had a very serious message for us all. He told us that the AGM was coming up on Wednesday 8th April at Pulborough Village Hall at 7.30 and as things stand there is nobody to take over from him as Chairman, as there is no Vice Chairman, and even the Secretary is having to give up, though he would do that job if called upon. He pointed out that unless someone volunteered for the Chair, this might be the very last event ever held by the Regnum Crouch, which would be a huge tragedy. So he appealed to every one for support, and a volunteer for the job of Chairman.

The judge for the evening was Chris Neill-Griffin who came from Wessex. She told us about her photographic qualifications, and then the competition started.

The very first image was entitled ‘Common Terns' and was a picture of three birds, one carrying a fish, entered by Bognor, and I knew that Ian’s very good picture entitled ‘Arctic Terns courtship flight' was entered by us, and blow me down there was also a third image entitled ‘Arctic Tern Display' entered by Steyning as well. Amazing that three clubs entered the same wildlife subject in the same competition.

Anyway, our first image in Round One was “Dark days’ by Martin Tomes which Chris liked very much and gave it 17 marks, which put us in second place equal with Henfield.

In Round Two, our entry was Alex Swyer’s image entiled ‘Breakfast' of a Bee feeding on an Orcid which was awarded 16 and placed us Third, so far so good.

However, in Round Three our entry was my image of ‘Icelandic Horse feeding’ which only got 15. Chris thought that I should have rearranged the horses so that a few more heads were showing facing in the right direction! This result set us sliding backwards even further. Sorry everyone.

It was the interval next with the distribution of teas and coffees going smoothly. Our Chairman Chris then decided to do the Draw before everyone sat down. I had been asked to do the calling of the numbers, but as the break approached, I panicked as I suddenly realised that I would not be able to tell the green and blue tickets apart.

It was OK as Chris followed me round and told me which colour the tickets were as I got them drawn from members of the audience. However, we had a lot of prizes and people took ages to shout out when they found that they held the drawn ticket, with the result that the draw was a bit drawn out! (joke!?. In future we will pre-draw the tickets).

Then onward with Round Four, and our entry was Ian’s Arctic Tern image which was also awarded 15 points. This put us in Sixth place, slowly sinking further.

Round Five cheered us up as Jane Coward’s lovely flower picture, ‘Radiating flower’, was awarded 17 points. This put us back up tho Fifth equal.

In the Final Round our entry was Norman Kirby’s ‘Welsh Assembly’ image which got 16 and we finally finished Fourth equal with Chichester.

Chris the Judge went into a lot of detail, pointing out all the areas in every image that was not pin sharp or was over or under exposed.The winners were Worthing and Mid Sussex both with 101 marks. Second were Steyning with 99; Third with 97 were Bognor, and we got 96 with Chichester. Not our finest hour, but by no means disgraceful.

The most important thing for our club was that, as hosts, the evening was well organised by our committee, and with the help of the raffle the evening was also finacially profitable.

Well done all who made this possible.

Submitted by Derek Grieve on