April 2006
Next club meeting Monday 8th May 2006.
Meetings are held at the Abbey Baptist Church, Abbey Square, commencing at 7.00 p.m.
April meeting.
The speaker this month was John Wilson. His talk was entitled `Life Saving Awards' and covered four distinct aspects:
The issuers of such awards can be in one of two categories; those from official bodies ( = government, including military) and those from unofficial organisations. The first group includes such awards as the Victoria Cross, George Cross and the Queens Gallantry medal. It was during this part of the talk that the speaker gave some details of specific acts of bravery, mostly concerned with saving life. However, this was not always the case since in earlier times saving property was more important, The second group includes a wide range of awards and organisations. Throughout his talk the speaker gave the details of organisation, the awards they issued and incidents leading to awards. In particular he explained how the awards had evolved and developed over the years from large chunks of metal akin to medallions to smaller wearable pieces akin to military medals. Examples in the talk covered:
In addition to medallic awards other types of awards include Certificates, Parchments, Money and a variety of objects (watches, telescopes, binoculars, silver plate) Mr Wilson briefly covered the sources of records and information ( eg Public Records office, Museums, Libraries, Universities, civil and industrial organisations such as Lloyds and Newspapers). To ensure accuracy information sometimes needs to be verified from more that one source. The speaker related how a newspaper reported a sea rescue in shark infested waters. Further research revealed the rescue occurred off Grimsby ! ! To conclude the speaker covered the details of three specific acts of bravery. Many thanks to Mr Wilson for a very interesting and enjoyable talk - supported by a superb array of specimens from the speakers collection, some of which are rarely available for close inspection.
Spring social - Skittles Evening 6th April 2006
Eighteen members, wives and friends attended the recent skittles evening at the Red Lion in Theale. Once again we were especially pleased to see Jean Myhill, who came along to see old friends. The traditional opening game was the usual warm up of' the boys' versus the 'girls' where the object is to hurl 3 cannonades down the ally and scatter as many of the nine pins as possible. Definitely a manly activity - and yet the boys were well and truly trounced by the ladies who won by some 20 points. Interestingly the scores all round were generally on the low side compared to previous years. This of course was attributable to the wonky floor and the absence of ballistic experts Michael and Maurice. The highest individual scores were posted by Kay and John.
In the second game called `killer' the object is quite simple - hit a skittle or loose a life. Sounds easy but the rub is that all the skittles are only reset once all the pins are down. Hence, as the game progresses, for some there is less to aim at. Add in the factors of a wonky floor and a few pints and players are usually eliminated in quick order - but not this year. There were many successful single skittle hits so that the game lasted much longer than usual. The winner was once again Kay, with Henry as runner up.
To end the evening, the chairman said a few words of thanks to all the members and guests for their participation and presented the winners with their prizes of bottles of wine - and also special vote of thanks to Jean's grandson and Tim and Julie's children who did a sterling job in resetting the pins and keeping the scores. Overall a highly enjoyable and fun evening with good drinks and a substantial buffet. And once again we proved it is still possible to get 3 balls though the pack without felling a pin
Future Events.
Past Events
30 years the club event was a member's meeting.
20 years ago Edward Besley gave a talk on Medieval German gold with the focus on the Holy Roman Empire and King Richard.