Chairman’s Blog – Meeting Thursday 20th December 2012
What a great meeting. It lived up to all expectations containing all the ingredients of bonhomie and Christmas good cheer.
25 members present and indeed all brought presents for the Secret Santa.
Many silly pullovers from the garish to the plain ridiculous. Well done to all those who made the effort. Kevin Brooks looked more frightening than usual with his McTavish hat complete with ginger hair underneath. Graham Thurston’s pullover was particularly outstanding, complete with snake and apple, but perhaps more Old Testament than Christmas. Paul Booth’s Wife is in for a treat if he presents her with the pullover that he was wearing today. Claire Greenslade got the nod for the best effort because not only did she have a festive pullover, but she was flashing as well. Us blokes are stimulated rather than upset by flashing – well done Claire.
The meeting got off to a really good start with a breakfast that included scrambled egg that struck the right degree of balance between soft and hard. The mushroom test on my plate left the mushroom sitting happily in a small crater that it created from its descent.
The Christmas crackers produced jokes which everybody used at the beginning of their 60 seconds, some of which induced genuine laughter, something of a first for Christmas cracker jokes. The jokes also contained a trivia questions the best of which was Mike Rogers which had an answer “Sir Jimmy Saville”, the question is probably almost irrelevant, I think it had something to do with wrestling.
Not only were the 60 second offerings suitably seasonal, but Nick Morgan, Marcelle Saad, Claire Greenslade, John Probert and, of course, the resident Bard all produced poems. If Christmas poetry was not theme enough in itself Alan Shaw sent us all off on a different tack by asking us to guess whether or not certain gifts he had bought for his Wife were true or not. This prompted Jamie Harrison and Kim Douglas to very positively assert that the receipt of pots and pans or a wok as Christmas presents represented grounds for divorce: apparently Jamie didn’t even get to keep the pots and pans. A good lawyer needed here.
Flights of whimsy abounded with Howard Bullock looking to make investments for the Easter Bunny, Brian Painter producing the singing maggot and Mike Moisley looking to make security arrangements to stop Santa coming down the chimney. So wild were the flights of fancy that when I suggested that Solicitors made returns to Santa to notify of changes of address for present delivery, everybody seemed to take it seriously.
Graham Thurston seems to have definitely kicked the habit. His pullover would have prevented hands being put in pockets in any event, but he stood to attention to both deliver his 60 seconds and also to award the Oscar which went to Jason Nortey who also contributed a certain amount of poetry, but tried to sing it. It is perhaps something he should have offered Jason before he started singing, but hey ho or rather ho ho – it is Christmas.
The 10 minute presentation was hijacked by Brian Painter with his outlandish quiz and very ably won by Graham Thurston in a play off having scored 13 out of 20. Next year I am going to answer all of the questions with the same answer and see how I get on.
After all the excitement the referrals round seemed to be something of an anti climax, but approximately £10,000.00 worth of business was recorded, there were 31 referrals and the star of the show was Dawn Ribnell. I lost count of the number of referrals that she passed, but I understand John Probert is considering booking a holiday on the strength of it, a great contribution from Dawn which reminded us of why we were there.
Finally, may I take this opportunity of thanking all members for assisting me as Chairman in enabling both meetings and the whole organisation to run smoothly and so effectively for all of us.
I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and look forward to us all returning on the first Thursday of January 2013 refreshed and ready to go with much more whimsy, but more importantly much more business to be passed.
One final thought for those of going to the Christmas Dinner, please note the timings:
7 o’clock at the Blue Boar, 7.30 at Prezzo’s. There are 24 confirmed attendees. See you there.