Torrisholme BC

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.

With Christmas out of the way, it’s time to start organising some more social events for 2006. There’s always great difficulty in organising events which incorporate activities – it’s always very difficult to plan numbers because most people have serious committment issues. Yeah, yeah, we know – it’s difficult to justify spending time/money on activities with the badminton club when you’ve already got so much going on with family/work/golf/real-friends etc, we (the social committee) have those things too, so we understand. Also, finding nice group events which are inclusive and inexpensive is troublesome – not everybody likes bowling, not everybody likes paint-balling and not everybody likes zorbing. It’s hard enough to organise a badminton evening and keep everyone happy, so what chance have we got with white-water rafting?

That’s not to say we won’t be doing some of these things over the coming months, but it’s just another appeal for your assistance. Try and answer us when we ask you if you’d like to come to x event or if you fancy y activity (even if it’s “No, please stop bothering me”), and try and remember that we’re supposed to be working on all of this for your benefit. We’re not doing it just to piss you off (if we were, you’d know about it). If you’ve got any ideas for an event, or anything to contribute, then contact us.

So, anyway, with all of this in mind, a nice easy start to the social calendar for 2006. No activity, no hidden costs, just a nice, simple meal and a drink. No pressure to come, but everyone more than welcome.

• When: Saturday, February 4th. (time TBD, see below)
• Where: Quite Simply French, 27a St. Georges Quay, Lancaster.

So, what time? Wee-ell, that’s up to popular response. It has been suggested that we take advantage of the early bird menu, but, as the name cleverly suggests, we’d have to go early. Between 6 and 6.30. That’s going to be OK for some, but not for others, so majority rules on this one. We’ll need numbers and preferred times ASAP. I’ll canvas around the club this week, and I’ll make a booking by Friday of this week, after which the list will be closed. Obviously, if we can’t get in at QSF for any reason, we’ll find somewhere else to go.

So, a nice meal and then a few drinks. Who’s up for it?

Contact us by email or see James Illingworth or Stuart Allan in person, or leave a comment against this post. I mean, you’re reading this aren’t you, so you’re like, on the internet, right?

Well, if that was the Xmas meal, we’ve had it.

14 people, 1 restaurant, 11 photos…

So the ‘A’ and the ‘C’ played Bolton-Le-Sands ‘A’ and ‘D’ at home last night. The clash of the ‘A’ teams ended with honours even, but the ‘C’ team really flew the flag for the home club, winning 17 – 1. Well done (except for the pair who lost that game – you’re rubbish). The ‘B’ team are playing tonight at Garstang, so I’ll post the results when I have them.

Full details of the Xmas meal are now up, see the link in the side bar under ‘pages’. Or the link in the last sentence. A slight correction from the last post, btw – the deposit needs to be £10, not £5 as I stated.

Just a quick catch-up this evening to give details of next weeks matches, up-coming club nights and a brief heads-up about the Xmas meal. I’m not going to go into detail about recent results, mainly because I can’t – I’ve been a bit out of touch with the all the teams results since the events detailed in the last post – and you’re better off visiting the league’s results page, which is actually bang up to date as I write this. All I do know is that all of the teams are going along rather nicely, actually, but the ‘A’ team had a bit of a hiccup at Garstang ‘C’ last week, going down 10 – 8. Um. If any team captains (or any other members come to that) want to be able to post results and match reports directly to the site simply register a username and I’ll give you privileges to write posts!

Next weeks matches are:

• ‘A’ Team – Home, Bolton-Le-Sands ‘A’
• ‘B’ Team - Away, Garstang ‘D’, Tuesday 8pm (Garstang Leisure Centre).
• ‘C’ Team – Home, Bolton-Le-Sands ‘D’

Bolton-Le-Sands ‘D’!? Sheesh, how big is the catchment area for Bolton-Le-Sands badminton club!?

This means there will be a club night on Thursday night at Salt Ayre, 8.30 – 10.30, but no club night courts available on Monday night. Speaking of club nights, one deviation from the expected pattern, and NOT as advertised on the recent flyer handed out by Cynthia, is that there will NOT be a club night on Monday 21st November. Check back here nearer the time to see if there’s going to be a club night on the Thursday that week (I suspect there might be). I’ll put up the complete list of club nights on a separate page shortly (check the side bar for the link –>).

We have now booked the Xmas meal. We have 24 places booked at The Gatehouse on Friday 2nd December. Cost is £20 per head (this is exactly the same as the cost for the Xmas meal at the Gatehouse in 2003). Further details, like the menu and stuff, will be posted shortly. In the meantime, get your £5 deposit to one of the Social Committee (James Illingworth or Stuart Allan), and check out the pictures from the last time we were there back at the old website…

I’m pleased to announce the arrival of the newest member of the Torrisholme Badminton Club family, William Joseph Illingworth. Born at 15:47 today, 24th October 2005, weighing in at 7′ 11″

If anyone wants to buy him a racket as a birthday present to kick-start his Badminton career, I can look after it for him…

More pictures…

The Yonex All-England Open Badminton Championships are happening at the National Indoor Arena (NIA), Birmingham, from 18th – 22nd January 2006. This is earlier than usual to accommodate the Commonwealth games, which take place next year.

The Social Committee are organising a trip to see the Semi-finals and Finals days (Saturday and Sunday, 21st and 22nd). This will be the second year the club have been to the finals, and the last event (March this year) was a great weekend, lots of great badminton, fairly obviously, and lots of eating and drinking and just general arsing around, also fairly obviously. See some pics from the mental hotel we used over here…

Anyway, if anyone’s interested, you’ll need to let us know fairly quickly as we need to book tickets for the venue (which are selling out fast) and also book hotel rooms.

Costs are likely to be around £20 a day for the tickets and one nights hotel accommodation and whatever we spend on booze, food and thunder sticks. Transport will be through car sharing, most likely, and splitting the fuel costs. So the biggest variable is the hotel accommodation, and how this splits out will depend on who comes and how we’re able to arrange room sharing, but a twin room will typically be around £50 – £70, hopefully split 2 ways. You know, it’s probably going to be a total of about £100 to get there, stay there and see the badminton, and then meals and drinks on top of that. Not a really expensive weekend, to be honest, but then again I couldn’t do it every week…

Let us know, pronto. Come and see me (James) or Stuart Allan, or email the usual address.