MARCH MEETING

After a bit of confusion a quick AWAYDAY was organised by someone. An evening of ELECTRONIC DARTS and a nice steak.....

The confusion is understandable as the name of the two organisers for this meeting had been on the website since October 2025, and repeated in messages on Whatsapp subsequently. So how could the organisers, Graham and Ron, possibly be expected to know it was their meeting???? I ask you!?

So at short notice a meeting was cobbled together. It involved us meeting in a quasi pub, one that neither bothered with any recognisable beers (certainly no Bitter) or any persons recognisable as staff (certainly not trained staff at any rate).

After some slow service drinking non-branded beers we repaired to the darts venue. We entered another bar, strikingly similar to the one we had just left and were then ushered into the darts room. Two dart boards....

No real instructions, and best of all, NO FLOOR MARKING to deliniate where you throw from. The start of the Oche. 7 feet 9 1/4 inches from the board (2.37m for the fussy). The room must have cost the thick end of ten grand, but no bastard could be bothered to fix a carpet strip to show where to throw from. Amazing!

So we started chucking away with gay abandon......................

BELLIE, THE ACTUAL LOSER, LOOKING LIKE AN ACTUAL WINNER

THE ACTUAL WINNER - SCORING AN ACTUAL ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!

THE ACTUAL WINNERS = WAYNE & BRIAN - ON THE WALL FOR ALL TO SEE.

So after an hour of chucking we decided that the excitement was too much for us and we scarpered over to the Argentinian restaurant down the road.

Here we encountered the third group of staff who were a bit short on training. The chef did a bang up job on rustling up 15 steaks, all different, all cooked to order, all bloody brilliant, best steak I have had in years, and I've eaten loads in Argentina and thought they were amazing. No competition, these were superb.

So were the chips that should have accompanied them. No such luck. "Chef, 15 orders for steak and chips". "No problem, I'll cook all the steaks first, then once they have been sent out I'll start on the chips, once they have cooked and been sent out 20 minutes later, I'' start grinding the pepper for the pepper sauce, no worries".

So we enjoyed an excellent steak, finished those. Then some time later we were served some lovely chips, and after they were finished we were offered some sauces. Quite odd in so many ways. But damn good steak!!

The price for the whole thing was a source of some amusement. Goodness knows how many beers, expensive steaks, fine wines, plus darts....... The budget was £1400 for the meeting.

Ron, who had been advocating total clarity over budgets due to an emerging trend of members taking the meeting budget in cash at the start, paying over what was demanded by the establishment, then pocketing the balance rather than handing it straight back, was surprisingly uncooperative when asked how much it had cost. Ron's excuse was that the cost exceeded the budget and out of the goodness of his heart he had paid the shortfall himself!

Good man Ron! Is all I can say. Reminds us all of Andy's meeting a couple of years back. Great meeting, great food and drink, way over budget, and he treated us too. That is much better trend than simply keeping a surplus as though it is some sort of bonus for serving sandwiches instead of steaks!!!!

For those that give a shit the actual winner of the darts was Owen with 139, Gary second with 110, Best teams were Owen and Tony, and Owen and Pete. So probably OWEN just pips us all at the post.