Our July meeting was the first at Priestwood since March 2020, 16 months ago! We continue to be careful, Covid-wise, and the weather made it possible for the auctions of wood and tools to be conducted out of doors.
We totalled 25 people in all, and after everyone checked in and got their auction cards, the wood auction started at around 7:30. Thanks to Richard, Brian, Colin, Shirley and John, a good selection of oak, ash, hornbeam and cherry were loaded on the trailer, as well as several nice burrs. The wood auction raised £550 for the club.
Everything happened outside except the competition judging, which for the first time since March 2020 was done in person, by Richard Maynard. He had three remote and four physical entries to place, a smaller table than normal but a good opportunity to see how the two forms of entry can be handled together. The sheets of paper you can just see on the table represent the three remote entries this month, which Richard had perused in advance.
I’m afraid at the moment we don’t have any photos of the judging itself, just a screenshot from a Zoom recording of the table. Thereby hangs another tale.
There was a plan to have a Zoom feed to the membership who weren’t able to be there in person, and we hope to be able to do that at every meeting in future. Unfortunately we have to get past bandwidth issues with the wi-fi. We hope to get that sorted before we meet at Priestwood again.
The results of the July competition will be on the Gallery page soon.
After the break, the tool auction started – you can just see the gazebo and the table through the window, outside the back door. The tool auction – all tools and unwanted workshop ‘stuff’ donated by members – raised £133 for the club. And under the gazebo, Shirley sold some old blanks that she had bought at a good price and sold at a fixed price; she made a profit of £39.50 for the club with still some more blanks left over.
Huge thanks to Malcolm for struggling behind the scenes with the new digital AV kit over the past few months – a steep learning curve marred by a problem outside his control. When that is sorted, he will need at least two volunteers to learn the system and help to set it all up before meetings and to help take it down and put it away afterwards. The more volunteers, the less the workload.
And huge thanks to Richard for being such a superb master of ceremonies throughout the evening.