A great final meeting in 2014

Meeting Report

As I said as I started the report on our last year’s meeting, this last meeting before Christmas was always called 'The Chairman’s Evening’ until recently, and tonight was very definitely Chris’s evening. He had prepared a very good quiz, which was very informative to those of us who did not know some of the answers. It was about local ‘celebs’ and in addition to this, he made the most delicious fruit cake so far known to man. It was magnificent. Is there no end to our Chairman’s talents?

Praise must also go out to Daisy who arrived early to start preparing and heating the very tasty Mulled Wine. She was also responsible for getting a lot of the nibbles. And of course Audrey produced her usual delicious Mince Pies. Thanks to them and also to all the others who brought bits for us to eat.

We sat at tables of four, which had been set up by Dave Burton. I found myself sitting with my friends the MacWhirters and Janet.

Firstly, we all had our first try to solve the questions in the Quiz. I did know most of the answers, but the others made up for my ignorance. However, if Janet, our scribe, had agreed with two of my suggestions, we would have come out First equal; but instead we had to settle for Third,

After a few minutes of this, we broke off to have a presentation by Janet about a trip she did in Nepal with a group of fellow Kayakers and their guides. We already knew she was a huge enthusiast of this daring sport, but until now I had not realised that she must be slightly mental as well!! It gave us a glimpse of the terrain in Nepal and of the people and was very interesting. Thank you Janet.

Finally, we had been asked by Chris to bring along up to 10 slides. John Gauvin had dug a slide projector out of his loft and Alex took over as projectionist. The majority of the slides showed us places in the past, some of which we knew. We started with Dave showing a series of shots of the old Shoreham Power Station and the Docks. Dave did his apprenticeship there (the Power Station, not the Docks!) and these were taken at that time and I for one found them very interesting.

There followed, in no particular order, Ruth showing us pictures she took when she taught at a prep-school; Audrey showing us some square format slides taken on an early Kodak camera which cost her £3 10s which she purchased just before travelling to Australia with a fellow nurse. She told me once that they bought an old van to take them around. We saw a Koala Bear in the wild and other shots of Aussie years ago; Chairman Chris showing pictures of himself climbing vertical rock faces and folk walking along a ‘knife edged ridge’ roped together so that if one fell off one side the other chap had to immediately throw himself off the other side, which MIGHT stop them both falling to certain death. This struck me as even more bonkers as a recreational sport than kayaking; I showed various natural history slides; James showed us various images taken on Christmas Island at the time Britain tested its first Atomic Bomb; Alex showed some old stuff including one of him as a young man posing in a tree: Ray showing us some ‘arty' stuff taken through a hole in a persplex sheet which were very interesting; and finally Juliette showed us a few slides that her Mother had taken in London years ago. Everyone received a round of applause after their slides were shown, except me. So that has ruined my Christmas! It’s no use any of you ringing up to tell me that you enjoyed them; as far as I am concerned the Club has spoken!

We all thoroughly enjoyed the evening (with the exception of me) and our thanks are due to Chris in particular, but also to members of the committee who contributed in distributing the delights and indeed generally working to make the evening a great success

Submitted by Derek Grieve on