August was a basic club day and with Bert no longer with us and Matthew away in America Paul opened the meeting and we started with a minute silence in hohour of Bert.
Paul then went on to mention that The Garden of England club is having financial difficulties due to covid etc.causing poor attendance as indeed we all have.
Although we are not in financial difficulties we have been running at a loss since things returned to normal? and we will not be able to sustain too many big demonstrators in the future.
The cost of travel puts a large lump on the charges they make so it is a thought to be considered and will come up for discussion at the next AGM that we will have two types of club day.
One will be a social coffee day with lathes out for anyone to use for as little or as long as they like and a chance to discuss ways of doing things, or your latest holiday , whatever.
The other club day will be when a member has kindly offered to do a half day demonstration or even all day if they wish. These will be treated as demo days and it will be bums on seats and pay attention please!!.
We are a great club and we don’t want to fade away.

Ok, so on with the day.
Paul was on the big lathe and was turning a mini bird house while Keith Leonard was on one of the small lathes making some large tapered pegs, I didn’t ask but I imagine oak, for a restoration project that his son is working on.
In the meantime Steve Tredwell was sorting out some gremlins that had creapt into the other club lathe before starting to turn a piece of yew.
I asked him what it was going to be and he said that he would decide after he had turned the bark away. The last time I looked it was now a smallish cylinder with a split along its length. I suppose it could be called fire wood or maybe a cylinder with a feature!!

A couple of photos of the morning but I had to leave at lunch time so I missed any exciting moments of the afternoon.
Also we had a new member join us.
Ted Hogben met Paul at the Chestnut Weekender so Paul invited him along to our meting and Ted signed up there and then

Welcome to the best club in town Ted.

Having said all that our next meeting on Saturday 10th September we will have Les Thorne with us for the day.
Les has been around a long time and his work covers a wide range of styles.
He also has a range of tools he sells so don’t be surprised if a little shop appears in the side room, or not!!

A day to look forward to so see you ALL there.

Graham/Paul/Fred.