Halloween 2013 Men's Meeting

Curiously, Halloween fell on a Thursday night this year, prompting a few of our members to dress up for the meeting. Meet Pirate Pete aka Marco Taljaard...

The dummy

A curious, old-fashioned tradition has resurfaced in Alex/Kenton 210 - when a Tabler's wife is pregnant, he wears a dummy for the duration of meetings till the baby is born. Still another few months till Chockkie Ling-Ling Gooseberry is born...

Come dine with me

Some photos from the whole Come Dine With Me experience some of our members and 41ers are putting themselves through (only three left to go)

Steak Evening!

With all the revamping going on at the RT210 Alex/Kenton clubhouse, it was decided to host a Steak Evening to show off what has been achieved so far.

About 80-odd members of the community and raiders from other Tables, namely Port Alfred 177; Zwartkops 195; J-bay/Humansdorp 252, attended the function.

The party lasted well into the early hours of the next morning. Great fun!

See the photos of the almost completed Clubhouse

2nd ASSCO Meeting in East London

What is 2nd ASSCO? Four times a year the Association Executive and all the Area Chairmen in the Association meet to discuss important issues and give feedback on our Areas and portfolios. The abbreviation of Association Council is ASSCO. The 1st ASSCO is held at ARTSA; the 2nd ASSCO at the venue of the next ARTSA; the 3rd ASSCO is normally hosted by the President’s home Club; and 4th ASSCO is held at the next ARTSA.

I travelled up to East London on Friday afternoon, and promptly hit five o’clock traffic. Truly amazing! Anyway, I finally arrived and checked into the Hotel Osner and then met up with all the others around the hotel bar. Once we had calmed our nerves with some liquid refreshments, we set off to the East London 1 clubhouse. They hosted us for supper and an amazing party afterwards which saw us dancing the night away (some of us using the bar counter for lack of floor space).

The next morning we enjoyed a good breakfast before heading into the meeting, where I was joined by the members of “Tourist 276” (see my report from Tri-Area) Eugene, Wayne and Fabrizio. They had managed to bring Hennie de Klerk from Port Alfred 177 along with them, and before long Johan Lindeque had made his way over town from the National Ladies Circle weekend too. After giving themselves far too many sergeant’s drinks, they made their way home, leaving me to sit out the rest of the day-long meeting. After the meeting ended, we all spent an hour or so catching our breath at the hotel bar, before we all headed over to Buccanneers for supper and our last night together.

So many friendships were formed, so many great ideas swopped and many a proud Area Chairman boasting of his Area and their achievements. Nice to be able to swop war-stories and plans ahead. I really punted the Area Conference in

November and as a result may have at least 6 Area Chairmen as well as the Association Exec coming through to attend in Port Elizabeth. It will be one Conference you won’t want to miss out on!

Tri-Area at Albert Falls

What is a Tri-Area? Well, it’s when three Areas (in this case Natal North Coast, Natal South Coast & Drakensberg) get together on one weekend at one venue and hold their Area

Conferences together. The attendance this time was around 264 people, and what a vibe!

The newly organised club of Tourist 276 (Eugene & Dee Catherine, Fabrizio Altichiero, Wayne & Leza Stevenson and myself) left Port Alfred at around 7.00am on Friday morning. After a stop in East London to collect dress-up clothes for the Ladies, and a near-miss with some falling masonry, we were off! Some words of wisdom: the end-of-the-month weekend Friday is not one to choose for travelling via the old Transkei. We saw everything from a hearse with an Emergency Exit, gravel sections on the N2 and drivers eating mielies, to bridges being built in the middle of Mthatha (really far away from the nearest water mass).

Anyway, we finally got there (12.5 hours later) in the metropolis of Albert Falls, which is about 20km from Pietermaritzburg. After losing our way in the reserve, we found the party at the Yacht Club (yes, amazingly, a Yacht Club) and soon found our party groove. When the clock struck 3am we decided to call it night.

The next day saw me opening the Natal North Coast Conference, followed by my handing over the striped jacket and qwagga show ensemble to their Area Chairman. Let’s just say that the jacket doesn’t fit… At least he is wearing the tie. We then toured around to visit the other two meetings before ending the afternoon with Gin & Tonics on the verandah at the Yacht Club. It was off to dress-up at the house, before we made our way to the main hall for the evening. And guess what? We won the competition for Best Dressed!

After getting into more comfortable clothes, we headed back to the Yacht Club to finish what we could of the bar tokens, but at R 20.00 for a double Captain and Coke you take a while! Eventually we succeeded in getting to bed just after midnight.

The drive back was a little less stressed but we still did it in 9.5 hours, with a slight headache. I can recommend that if ever you have the time, attend a Tri-Area. There are currently two: this one I attended as illustrated above, or the one which is a combined Bushveld, Gauteng & Mpumalanga Areas. And how it works is that each Area of the three in the arrangement has a turn to host so each year the conference moves venue.