Happy New Year Everyone
For those of you that attended the Christmas Dinner as you read the below you may notice an obvious omission. This will be explained/resolved at the Feb Club Night.
With our January Club night being the Christmas Dinner and Awards ceremony, it seemed to extend the Christmas festivities for everyone involved. The venue was our usual haunt, The Cricketers Pub in Fordham Heath and people started to gather at around 18:30 in preparation for the evening. Myself and Caroline handed out the name tags, which also had people’s menu choice on the reverse, just in case they had forgotten. Starters, Main and Dessert were served by the Staff with great efficiency as usual. On the night we had a total 45 people, which were a mix of Members, members wife’s and partners. A good turnout considering the floods that were occurring around Essex.
After Tea/Coffee and mince pies we kicked off the awards ceremony. This year we had 5 awards to hand out plus a couple of Specials.
The First was The Reeve Family Cup, awarded for most occurrences of using a vintage machine. The award went to Paul Davis who has nothing but vintage machines, so it was a good probability he would win.
Paul being presented with the commentative photo and Cup. I just about got my hand with the Cup in the picture.
The Second award was The Ralph Davis Cup. Awarded to a member for their increased involvement in club activities and for this year for suggesting and volunteering to run an annual ride out in memory of Gordon Levett.
The Piston Broke Ralph Davis award was presented by Caroline to the winner -Shaun Parker.
The next award was the Alan Jones Cup, which is for exploits and antics on 2 wheels and in this case, 1 involving a Tractor. The cup went to Dr Vic Sayers, who this year either turned up on a bike or occasionally in plaster and a neck brace – hence the mention of a Tractor. We also got Vic a toy Green Tractor to add to the prize giving.
Caroline, Vic and Nick
The last award is The John Lay Cup. We decide to present the Cup to someone who has tirelessly been running the club for many years and finally found someone to take over. His parish notes and injected humour has been enjoyed by club members for many a club night. Now it is time for him to enjoy being in the club and watch others run it, hopefully as well as he did. The Cup went to Colin Smith.
Caroline, Colin and Nick
As this was a special night for Colin, the club members had a whip round over the last few months and have awarded him with a permanent gift of an engraved Salver. This was to show our appreciation of the efforts and commitment they have given over the years and in keeping the club running. We also presented Colin’s wife Jane with a bouquet of flowers for her efforts in supporting Colin and sending out the members birthday cards.
And if you are wondering what happened to Kim, she was the one taking the wonderful Photos and hence not in them. All pictures taken on the night can be viewed and downloaded from our this website link: 2023 Christmas Dinner
Roll on the warmer weather and longer days so we can all get back on the bikes. Hopefully at the Feb club night we can start to plan a week/weekend ride out somewhere, Rain, Snow, weather permitting of course.
See you all on 7th Feb at the Cricketers
Thanks
Nick, Caroline & Kim