A word from El Pre$idente
My brother-in-law, Gerry, is Irish. It’s not relevant to this story, but I mention it anyway. He used to run a big pub in London that was on a corner site. It had two doors on the main street and a third door on the side street.
One day a man came in through the first of the doors on the main street and stumbled towards the bar. Clearly having had a very long lunch, Gerry told him he couldn’t be served.
The man left through the same door he had entered and a few seconds later appeared back in the pub through the next door.
“I’ve told you already. I can’t serve you. I’ll lose my licence.”
Visibly annoyed, the man turned around and left.
A few minutes passed and a shadow appeared at the third door, the one on the side street. Gerry walked over to the door and as it opened, he was there facing our determined hero.
The man looked at Gerry and said “Heaven help me. Do you own every pub in London?”
(Actually, he didn’t say Heaven help me, but I bet he wishes he had.)
Now the point of this story is that while we have again managed to get a great committee together this year, and everyone is doing a wonderful job, once again there is one person, who although she hates me mentioning it, seems to do the work of a thousand people. I am of course talking about Shaz.
I haven’t got much to do, so I like to go around opening doors. I open the door marked “Technology” and there she is building tonnes of automation to streamline how we handle our finances. Next, I go to the door marked “Teaching” and she is in there with our wonderful teachers, working on some secret project she won’t tell me about (“You wouldn’t understand it, even if I did.”). Then I look in the “Social Media” room and there she is. The “Marketing” room, Shaz again. Baking cakes, yup, she’s there too.
“Heaven help me. Do you do everything here?”
The Wonderful Willis Refurbishment
Now if you haven’t read the Menagerie series of books by Victor Mollo then you really should. And if you have read them, they are worth reading again.
If you recall, the Hideous Hog, and his group of misfits played at the Griffins Club, however they were occasionally forced to play at the Unicorn Club when the staff at the Griffins took their summer holiday or when it was being renovated. The Hog of course played rubber bridge for money and considered duplicate bridge to be a waste of time, so playing at the Unicorn was extremely annoying for him. We play duplicate everywhere so aren’t as inconvenienced as the Hideous Hog by having to move.
As you hopefully know by now, our very own Willis club will shortly be closing for renovations, so round up the friends you play there with, decide who is going to be the Secretary Bird, the Rueful Rabbit, and Molly the Mule, and head on over to East Lindfield or into Real Bridge while the Willis gets a much-needed facelift. Don’t go to the Unicorn Club though, I hear it’s not very good, better to stick with us.
We have been talking about the renovations since we went back to The Willis for our second stint there, so it is really wonderful that they are finally happening. The whole reception as well as the bridge area are getting refitted, and we will also get access to the bathrooms within the bridge room. Mike’s dingy office also gets a makeover. When we return the whole place should be greatly improved.
The budget for the renovations is something like $400,000 so it should be worth seeing. About half of the money is going on glass though, so if that goes well, we won’t be able to see it at all. When I first heard this, I thought they were spending $200k on grass, so I wasn’t sure if this was an overdue bill from the 60s or a lot of horses. Anyway, it is glass, so don’t worry.
General Stuff
I started to write about how the club was doing well but given the delay between me writing this and you reading it, I thought better of it. Only a fool would tempt fate in such a brazen manner. And while I may be a fool, even I have limits. Instead, I’ll just update you on the one area that was giving us some grief which is the finances.
I’m pleased to report that things are much better in that area, and we are back to roughly breaking even again. It is impossible to say if that will be sustained for the rest of the year, but I’d be happy to use the word “healthy” to describe things currently.
At this very moment someone will be writing me a letter…
Dear Mark,
I understand the club is awash with money and you don’t know what to do with it.
Might I suggest you reduce the table fees back to the 1963 rates of 2/6.
Signed Everyone
Unfortunately, like everyone else, our outgoings are due to increase at least in line with inflation and we are already aware of some increases which are coming our way shortly. Inflation is a fact of life for us all, but with our slightly improved piggybank we will try to keep the annual fee increases to a minimum this year.
Of course, closing the Willis for a couple of months won’t help, but as Mike has pointed out we have plenty of other sessions that you can play in until we re-open.
Finally, a bridge tip for you. Experts are always going on about finesses. If you have the Ace and the Queen in dummy, you should lead up to the Queen. Apparently, it works about 50% of the time. The time it doesn’t work is when your right-hand opponent has the singleton King.
Here is my tip. Try playing the Ace instead of the Queen. Sure, it won’t work all the time, but 50% isn’t all that great odds anyway, and the elation you will feel when it does eventually work is absolutely worth it.
Mark
