Minutes for 17^th May 2011

Meeting opened at – oh, about eightish. Give or take. Rod had given up any pretence at setting up a video, and reverted instead to the tried and trusted process of shouting.

Apologies:

Paul, Shane, Ian, Colin, Mel – basically, anyone who wasn’t there. Did I mention Colin?

Last month’s minutes:

Circulated. No issues raised.

Recent events:

“And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, Shall think themselves accursed they were not here...”

I refer, of course, not to Shakespeare’s Henry V St. Crispin day speech, but to the Cobbaton Combat Collection’s 30^th Birthday Bash. The weekend kicked off with an impressive convoy of WW2 vehicles -  four GMCs, a couple of Dodges, an ultra-rare Burma Jeep, half a dozen regular Jeeps and a couple of motorcycle out-riders - making its way to the wartime D-Day beach assault training ground at Braunton Burrows. The weather held and the smaller vehicles were allowed to make hooligans of themselves amongst the dunes.

The Americans had built special concrete hard-stands the size and shape of landing craft, to practice loading and unloading the trucks. For the first time since 1944, we were able to load up one of these practice landing craft with period vehicles, and get a tiny sense of what they must have been thinking when they did it for real all those years ago. It was strangely moving.

In the evening we were treated to a brilliant bar-b-cue and the following day was the Cobbaton Clearout bring-and-buy sale, which was a rip-roaring success. Congratulations to Preston, Tim, Dinie and team for achieving thirty years, and thanks for a great event.

Meanwhile, it’s Devon County Show weekend. Rod has lent the Help for Heroes stand his 101 (complete with ignition keys). What could possibly go wrong?

Forthcoming events:

Buckfastleigh –

Jenny has jumped through all the hoops to make this year’s event the most H&S-compliant in the history of mankind. If we’d had to fill out paperwork like this in 1944, D-Day could have safely been held in a child’s paddling pool and nobody would have got hurt.

Drogo –

Rod met with the NT last week to check progress. Anyone out there got a 1940s fire engine as the centrepiece for a ‘Home front’ display? Or a Tannoy system, come that.....

Trucks & Troops (27^th-30^th May) –

Cracking annual flagship event at Beaulieu, well worth a visit if you get the chance.

New listings –

·         Two requests received;

·         A Jeep or similar wanted to ferry young ladies to a prom in Torquay on 2^nd July, and

·         vehicles in support of a concert in Plymouth on 20^th August in support of Ford Park Cemetery

·         See attached emails for details.

Rob handed out copies of the updated events listing – electronic copy attached.

Club matters:

First, an apology. Despite years working as a professional journalist and editor, I missed the deadline for Windscreen’s Devon Area Report, so don’t bother going looking for it in the latest edition out earlier this week. I’m typing this from the naughty stair and will try to do better in future.

Second, something I’ll call ‘Royal tournament’ for the sake of a working title. I’m looking for something to introduce into our future events that’s got a bit of drama and a touch of competition to it, along the general lines of the field-gun race that used to be such a key part of the Royal Tournament. It needs to be a race between two teams to achieve a task; non-damaging and ideally using stuff we have to hand. Preston suggested a Jeep pull, for instance – simple and brilliant – but I’m sure there are other great ideas out there, so get your thinking caps on and let me have your suggestions. If we can come up with something that’s a real crowd-pleaser, we can challenge other areas and who knows – we could end up going viral!

Finally, we’re wondering about getting interested parties together to organise a trip to France for the D-day celebrations, possibly next year (although the planned Jubilee celebrations scheduled for 4^th June 2012 could be an issue). Anyway, start thinking about it......

The meeting closed at 8:02 – or perhaps my watch had stopped. Anyway, we all had another drink and agreed to do it all again next month..........