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Club Newsletter April 2005

STOP PRESS!
You may have noticed that we haven’t moved for a whole year! What’s more, we have no intention of doing so! Our hosts, John & Ve, have gone out of their way to make us feel welcome here since they took over, and having appreciative hosts makes such a difference to the atmosphere of the club. With Ve (and Rachel) doing the hard work, we have now introduced a buffet supper at ‘half time’ for the princely sum of 50p per person. This seems to be much appreciated by the regulars, and is certainly helpful in soaking up the alcohol which is on offer at a pleasantly low social club tariff!

Well, owing to other, more pressing matters, it’s been a while since any Club News actually got written! I shall now attempt to rectify that. Trouble is, with space being limited, it’s going to prove necessary to condense the information a little - therefore, my apologies to anyone who may feel that their particular contribution to the past few months at the Club has been down-played somewhat. If I were to give a lengthy dissertation on every event that has taken place Sam would have to run a supplement, or even start up another magazine, to accommodate it all!

 

So - here goes! Perhaps some of the most memorable events have been the two weddings last July - namely former regular Anne Mathews and her fiancé Dave Reader, and then Jaquie Caulten and Steve Daniels. I know there was a 3rd event in July, I recall they were on the 7th, 17th & 27th, but I cannot remember what it was. Sorry! I think it’s called getting older.

There have been some entertaining feature nights provided by the likes of Gene Burton, Lee Raymond and Sue Harris as well as a guest night featuring Ron Truman-Border and an extra feature night with Andy Kenna. By the time this news goes to press, we shall also have had feature nights from ‘Old’ Nick (to differentiate from ‘Nick the Younger’ who performs with his friend Richard) (Feb. 16th, tomorrow night as I write) and ‘Blackthorn’ (a.k.a. Rosie & Dusty), (Mar. 16th) - we’ll let you know how they turned out in the next news.

Of course, we’ve had the Christmas Party since I last wrote! That was an excellent evening with a superb turn-out. We had all sorts of events to amuse and entertain us, not least of which was the impromptu Pantomime performed by some of the regulars (will I ever forget the sight of John Baker as the Ugly Sister, or Rosie’s surprise Cinderella striptease!?), and then there was the marathon raffle (a heartfelt thanks to Carole for some serious shopping!).

Our most recent event has been the Songwriting Competition. This was originally scheduled for Jan 19th but, as it was then realised that the date clashed with some lousy weather, a football match and a gig for some of our resident singers, Priory Hard Shanty Crew, the event was postponed until Feb 2nd in order to allow the missing hordes to take part as well. We had an excellent 16 entries for the event, and it was heartening to hear that we still have so much songwriting talent amongst our regulars. As we were using the time honoured Eurovision Song Contest Rules (St. Denys variations) I brought along my laptop this time, so working out the scores proved less painful than on previous occasions. The results were as follows:

1st place - Gene Burton
'Write My Name (On the Book of Life)'
2nd place - Gene Burton
'The Last Honest Girl'
3rd place - Ian McBride
'As The Itchen Rolls By'

Commendations were also awarded to:

Richard & Nick (The Younger) - 'Questions'
Sue Harris - 'Watching The Sunrise'
Ian McBride - 'Holy Virgin Anna'

Congratulations to all! And thanks to all the helpers big and small!

We are looking forward to feature nights from: Anthony in April, Ian McBride in May, and our youngest members, the afore-mentioned Richard & Nick, in June - but you’ll have to wait for the next edition of Club News to learn more about those and a preview of the last feature night of the current season with Colin Marshall in July, although the club will still be running as an 'anything goes' during August & September.

 

Whew! I think that’s about all for now folks! I promise to try not to leave it so long before the next bulletin!

Dave Nixon
April 2005