Torrisholme BC

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Just a quick post – pictures from the xmas meal are available to view here and there’s a teaser below…

Matches start again next week believe it or not! I’ve updated the club diary at Google Calender with dates until the end of the season. The only ones which may not be on are cup matches and I’ll add those when I find them out myself. Anyone making use of that calendar, by the way?

Whilst you’re on the internet, why not check the league standings at the league website?

I have booked the club xmas meal at The Borough once again. Last year’s event there was enjoyed by everyone and the food, central location and decent enough beer make it a good choice I feel; but maybe we’ll ring the changes next year.

Another mid-week one, too, early December. I hope that the choice of day will mean fewer clashes with all the other work, family and mates’ xmas events with which folk are inundated at this time of the year and allow more of us to get out at the same time with no excuses! – so it’s 4th December and the meal is booked for 8pm.

The Xmas brochure is available here (pdf), but I’ve put the highlights below for you. Ain’t I nice. It’s £20.

I’ve booked for 18 and the usual ‘rules’ apply: First come, first served; £10 deposit per seat required to secure it and required asap in any case; club members and partners (sexual, not badminton) get priority and if there are any places left I’ll open it up to ‘friends of the club’. Balance can be settled on the night – I’ll collect what’s left before the meal.

I’d like to get the final list, deposits and food choices together by Monday 24th November, so that’s the cut-off.

Starters

• roasted parsnip, honey and wholegrain mustard from hawkshead relish company soup
• port of Lancaster smoked salmon, prawn and avocado salad served with a caper & citrus dressing
• locally sourced game terrine served with homemade cranberry and orange chutney
• smoked applewood cheese and caramelised onion tart served with mixed salad leaves and balsamic drizzle

Main

• locally reared roast turkey served with apricot and thyme stuffing, pigs in blankets and a port and redcurrant gravy
• baked herb crusted portobello mushrooms topped with melted goats cheese and served with butternut squash mash and winter leaf salad
• pot roast Cumbrian fell bred beef served with a red wine jus, root vegetables, button onions & creamy mash potatoes
• baked salmon fillet from Fleetwood served with horseradish infused creamed leeks and topped with a watercress and bacon salad

Dessert

• traditional Christmas pudding served with homemade brandy sauce
• auntie em’s chocolate torte served with vanilla infused crème anglais
• almond crème brulee served with homemade shortbread biscuits
• winter spiced fruit salad served with vanilla ice cream from cool cow at new holly farm

For everyone who went to the meal at The Borough, and for everyone else, there are some piccies available for your viewing pleasure at Flickr.

The Christmas meal for 2007 has been booked. In a departure from previous years, we’ve booked a midweek meal. This was partly because the weekends were not available at the place we’ve chosen, but also we thought this might allow more people who might have bookings at weekends in December to come to our event!

Anyway, the date is the 13th of December, that’s a Thursday night, and the place is The Borough, in Lancaster. We booked for 16 places, and the cost will be £20 per head. Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis, and we will require a 10 pound deposit by the beginning of December.

The Borough does excellent food and is well regarded locally. They have an excellent website, and the Christmas menu is available from there. In addition, we will be circulating fliers with details of the evening and the menu at club night. Also, I’ve put the date in the club diary. Note that that week is cup week, but we’ve worked around all the matches so that’s all right!

Hope you can make it!

The 2007 Badminton League Golf day has been announced. I copy the entire content of the note I received below. We don’t have the application form mentioned, but if anyone wants to play we can send details in a letter to Ian Gardner. Let us know.

Lancaster Morecambe & District Badminton League Golf Tournament 2007

This event is to be played at Heysham Golf Club on Wednesday, 27th June, commencing at 2.00 p.m.

It is open to Players and Officials, both past and present, who have played in the Badminton League.

The cost is £25 which includes 18 Holes of Golf, a bar-type Meal afterwards and Prizes.

To win a prize, Players must have a current Handicap, although Social Golfers are welcome to attend and play in the Event.

The maximum handicap will be 21 for Men, 28 for Women and will be 7/8* of Handicap. The event will be Better Ball Stableford and teams can be of any combination. Those wishing to play as a four-ball should provide details of the other pair.

A golfing event has been run for the last 3 years with limited numbers. I would like to think that this year we can get a substantial number of players both past and present to play to create a good social occasion afterwards as well.

Can I ask that any Secretaries who do not play golf pass this to a golfing member of your club to see how many people would be interested?

Attached is an application form and it would be appreciated if these could be returned (with deposit of £10) by the 31st May in order that I can let the Golf Club have details of approximate numbers.

Kind Regards,

Ian Gardner

Amongst the things discussed at the committee meeting last week were social matters, and we realised that it’s high time we sorted out another social event, particularly as we’re at the end of yet another season now.

Since the League end of season bash is happening at the end of the month (31st March at Heysham Golf Club again), and then it’s Easter weekend, we picked Saturday 21st April to go for a meal. For a change, we are suggesting the new Thai restaurant on Chapel Street, Mung Mee. A couple of us have eaten there and the food is very good.

I’ll be distributing a flyer with the details around the remaining matches and club nights, and I’ll include a copy of the menu. We’ll book for around 8 o’clock, I would think.

Let me or Stuart know if you want to come. Partners are welcome, of course.

Last chance to come in on the semi-official club group booking to see England/Germany at the Preston Guild Hall on 22nd of this month. That’s a fortnight this Thursday.

It’s semi-official because there’s not many of us going at the moment, and I’m putting the word around quite informally. This is partly because nobody seemed really bothered about the last one, which is fair enough.

Play starts at 6.45, so it’s an even bigger rush than getting to a home match…

Tickets are a tenner, and we’ll have to sort out some sort of car sharing. There are 4 of us in the the ‘official’ party at the moment, so that’s nice and easy.

I’ll be booking in the next day or so – I’ll probably ask around club night tomorrow (Monday 5th) and then book on Tuesday, if they haven’t already sold out, that is.

James.

The previously-trailed club Christmas meal was last night at Quite Simply French. See the handful of pictures I took. With apologies to the club’s newest member, Catherine, whom I failed to picture, for some reason – it certainly wasn’t intentional! Otherwise, I think everybody is in at least one of the photo’s. Enjoy.

From the League Website:

INTERNATIONAL BADMINTON COMES TO LANCASHIRE
On Thursday, 22nd February 2007, Lancashire will once again host an International Match, ENGLAND -V- GERMANY. The Venue will be The Guild Hall at Preston, commencing at 6.45pm, and will be recorded by the BBC for transmission on Grandstand the following week-end.
Germany are rapidly becoming one of the stronger squads in Europe and when the two countries last met it was a very close match. It will be a full international match with 5 events, mens and ladies singles, mens and ladies doubles and mixed doubles. Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson will be playing, together with the new Danish Open winners, Donna Kellog and Anthony Clark. England have probably one of the best squads for many years, come and see them in action.
The last two matches at The Guild Hall have been sell outs so avoid disappointment the Ticket Sales Hotline is 01908 268400 (Badminton England, Milton Keynes)
More information will follow, so to avoid disappointment get ringing!

Anyone fancy it? The last international was quite entertaining, and you may even get on telly, like what I did. I’ll put it in the calendar, anyway.

Quite Simply French – Saturday December 2nd

The Christmas meal has now been booked at Quite Simply French, 27a St. Georges Quay, Lancaster, for 8 p.m. 2/12/2006. This will be the second visit by the club this year, and the last one was thoroughly enjoyable.

This year the meal is £20 per head for 3 courses¹. There are no drinks included in that price, and any ‘additions to compliment’ must be paid for separately on the evening (don’t order in advance).

Places are strictly limited and available on a first-come-first-served basis. We require a £5 deposit and your starter and main course preference by 31/10/2006² – Give your money and choices to one of:

1. Your team captain
2. Stuart Allan
3. James Illingworth
4. Cynthia Dickinson

but Stuart should be your first port of call, really.

Here, for your convenience, the menu³.

Starters

Footnotes

1. before you ask, the third course is presumably variable and to be selected on the evening, as the menu only shows starters and main courses – I don’t know any more than that [back]
2. sorry, only 2 weeks notice, but would more notice have made any difference? [back]
3. Which can also be downloaded here [back]

You may or may not have noticed that the calendar link and mailing list link went missing from the sidebar on the main page recently. This is because of a long overdue change of host for the site because of the rubbish service offered by the last provider. Hopefully we should see better availability on the site now than previously. It does mean that I had to remove the calendar and mailing list links, though, simply because these services were hosted by the previous provider.

I have now set up a new calendar for the club, hosted by Google Calendars. You can access this in several ways: If you have a google account yourself (maybe you’ve already got Gmail or a Google calendar of your own) you can subscribe to the calendar and the events can then be overlaid on your own (Google) calender – this is what I will be doing and part of the reason I’m trialling Google for the club calendar – do this by clicking the very obvious button on the side-bar; You can link directly to the calendar using this address; or you can view the calendar on this site on the Calendar page (see also the side-bar, Pages section). I’ll gradually populate the calendar with all forthcoming events and matches. I can’t be bothered to do the whole season right now in one go, but I’ll do the next couple of weeks to be going on with.

Speaking of events, the Golf day I had been going on about for this Saturday looks like a no go at the moment – several people who wanted to come have cried off, and it turns out there’s a comp on at Morecambe anyway on Saturday. I really need to get one of our expert golfers on board to organise the golf side of the day – I don’t mind trying to organise the people to get together, but it would be handy to have someone who’s well into it to help organise tee-times and a format and help out the erm, less able with handicaps and stroke indexes and how to do stableford scoring and things. I’m thinking the Brian Forrest’s and Dave Carney’s and Dave Sowerbutt’s of the club can help out with that side – how about it guys? We’ll try and get something sorted in the next few weeks, yeah?

For information, the Yonex All England Championships 2007 take place between 7th & 11th March 2007.

See here for official information.

Not certain whether we’ll organise an ‘official’ club trip, there’s never been any interest in such a thing in the past, so I don’t imagine that’ll be any different this year.

A few of us did go down a couple of years ago, and had a thoroughly weird time…

As a follow on from the post about the league golf day, I spoke to a couple of the golfers in the club at the bowling night, and we think the club golf day is a definite goer. I’m suggesting we pencil in Saturday 23rd September – this gives us a couple of weeks to get ourselves sorted out, and hopefully the weather will have turned around a bit by then.

We have a choice of Morecambe or Heysham since we have members at each, meaning the non-members can get guest rates (£15 at Heysham) and this will help keep costs down. Personally, I’d prefer Morecambe, cos I’m a member at Heysham and like a change from time to time, but we’ll work out who’s up for it and get a concensus going – the Morecambe members might prefer Heysham for the same reasons (but we can always do it again and switch ends). We’d probably work out something where we split the total cost over all the players – this would seem a bit harsh on any of the players who are members (and so have effectively paid already), but would even out if we do it again at the other venue, I suppose.

I’ll catch up with most of you Monday night, hopefully, unless you’ve gone to the league golf event and don’t make club night!

Feel free to leave a comment about any of this, by the way…

Well, the social committee finally got their collective fingers out and sorted some bowling. By happy coincidence the date we chose for the night, 31st August 2006, was also a charity event at Morecambe Super Bowl in aid of the North-West Air Ambulance, so we were able to have 2 lanes from 7.30 until after 11 plus a buffet for £15.

Great fun, we must do it again sometime.

Pictures available on my Flickr account.

I’ve only just had word of this, and don’t know many details, but it appears that the third annual LM&D Badminton League golf competition will be held this Monday (4th September 2006) at Heysham Golf Club. As far as I know, you need to just turn up at Heysham GC at 5pm. Don’t know about the cost, can’t remember what it was last year. Don’t know if there are any restrictions either, like handicap or something. I told you I didn’t know many details.

I don’t know how long this has been ‘organised’ for, but the timing is absolute garbage as far as I’m concerned – 5 O’Clock on a Monday afternoon, and the first Monday in September?! Our first club night is on Monday at 8, so there’s no way any of us could do both. I bet other clubs are starting Monday, too.

I suggest we organise our own intra-club golf day – do it on a Saturday somewhere and have a laugh sometime before the Autumn/Winter weather really kicks in. Any takers? I know of at least 8 golfers in the club off the top of my head.

Ken Fletcher from Sunnyside BC has dropped me an email about a quiz night that they are holding.

It’s at The White Cross on March 22nd, starting at 7pm. There’s a £5 entry fee which includes food. All are welcome.

Thanks Ken.

BADMINTON England » The Carlton England v Denmark International
The Carlton England v Denmark InternationalOn Thursday 2nd March 2006, the Preston Guild Hall in Lancashire will be hosting The Carlton England v Denmark International match. Play will begin at 6.45pm.

The match will be played on one night only and will consist of Men’s and Women’s Singles, Men’s and Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles.

Anyone fancy this?

Quick update on the QSF meal, this has been booked now for 8 p.m. on the 4th Feb, with 16 places booked.

There will be a cub night tomorrow (Monday – 23rd Jan) at the college from 8 p.m.

This is a cup week, and both the ‘B’ and ‘C’ have matches. Check the diary for details. The ‘A’ team have a bye in this round.

The entry forms for the league tournament have now been distributed, and everyone should have theirs by now. If you haven’t, please see Cynthia for a copy. Closing date is February 10th.

That will be all for now.