There have been the usual highs and lows this year. We were very sad to lose 4 long standing members in the last 6 months. Kathleen Hewitt who would have been 100 in February this year, Jill Leslie who had spent many years running the Central Area Affiliated League for Surrey, Molly Slevin who spent most of her waking moments playing or teaching bridge and who would have been 90 this year, and Peter Norman who was our oldest serving member since he joined before the war and who would have also celebrated his 90th birthday this year. Letters of condolence were sent to their relatives on behalf of the Club and the Club was represented at all their funerals.
We all enjoyed
the Christmas Party and then got together again for the Duplicate Club’s Silver
Jubilee at the Woodcote Park Golf Club.
According to your letters and verbal commendations this was a
success. My thanks to all the efforts
of the Committee and Helen Seymour who made the cakes and provided the flower
arrangements.
The Captain’s Report shows the successes of the year but I will mention 3 of particular merit. Peter Lee’s team reached the final of the Garden Cities Trophy but did not repeat the successes of previous years coming 7th out of 8. Bill Hodgkiss and Malcolm Pryor won the Crockford’s Plate. Peter Lee and Bob Rowlands won the County Pairs.
We reported to Surrey the feelings of the Club members on P2P and Surrey used their voting power to register 4 votes against the plan but nevertheless the EBU got enough votes in favour to go ahead with their plans. It is now up to the clubs to decided on whether to remain affiliated to the EBU and I will be talking about that during the Meeting.
We followed up the ideas of Bridgemates and the Duplimate machine which were suggested at the last AGM. The Committee felt that the Duplimate machine would give an added burden to themselves and the members but they followed up the Bridgemate suggestion. Martin Cahm came and demonstrated it one night and although most members were happy to use it, it was felt that the initial setting up would take up too much time and delay the start of the evening particularly as we overlap with the ballet class plus there would be storage problems. The initial cost would have been in the region of £2500. Regrettably therefore we rejected the idea and thanked Martin for his time and trouble.
We did however invest in a new scoring program which only takes a little longer to score the session but has many advantages for Malcolm putting it on the web and liaising with the EBU, and also now gives the hands.
We still have problems with slow play and we are investing in a computerised timing system in an effort to speed the evening along.
A pairs championship has been introduced for Fridays and the initial event was won by Lynne Hiorns and Roger Sugden. We also took part in the Surrey Simultaneous Pairs holding one event on a Tuesday and another on a Friday and propose to continue to hold them similarly in 2009/10. An Intermediate League for players below Tournament Master was introduced by Surrey and we entered a team captained by Andrew Barnett.
Finally my thanks to all the Committee who have helped me during the year and best wishes to you all for an enjoyable and successful year to come.
Sylvia Timberlake