Surprise, Surprise!
The long-awaited Club dinner, cancelled because of Covid last year, was lining up beautifully for last Friday night when an email arrived from the Turf Club the preceding Sunday evening to say that six of their kitchen staff had succumbed to Covid and that their kitchens would be closed for a week. I had envisaged various possible reasons why the dinner might not be able to take place but, perhaps wrongly, hadn’t expected this particular one. My first reaction was to think that the dinner would have to be cancelled, but I then thought of the effort that members would be putting in to join us and the distances some of them would be travelling – including from Estonia, Yorkshire, Devon and Shropshire.
After giving it some thought, I decided that our local pub, The Surprise (that sounds very rough and ready but, in fact, it is a really smart establishment with good food and wine) might be able to accommodate us in their private upstairs dining room. We managed to get this lined up and, thankfully, seventeen of us were able to gather there for what turned out to be a really convivial and jolly evening. As one of our group said in an email encouraging me to go ahead with the dinner in the changed venue, ‘In these testing times, Carpe Diem is the order of the day. We must keep planning to do things and find ways to make them happen.’ He was absolutely right.
The Club’s membership, which has existed for just over three years is now up to a hundred. I feel sure that among the OS Club membership of 7,000, there must be more classic vehicle enthusiasts. If you are interested in joining our very lively and friendly group, please email me at members@salopiandriversclub.org. We have a number of events coming up over the coming months. We will be emailing all our members with details of these shortly.
In the meantime, Carpe Diem!
Miles Preston
Chairman, SDC