Started with a catastrophe ended up as the cheapest and best GASS AGM ever (said Henslow Tours rep). I quote the rep “that even beat Pontins!” I should add he was drunk at the time.
THE 42nd GASS AGM.
A short reminder of what happened and what was decided as a record for posterity and to help us in our dotage recall what we did in 2024
CHEAPEST AGM EVER! £565 for flight and shared room for four nights in a 4 star in Hvar. Beat that lastminute, Henslow Tours rises from the ashes! Once you all get your (hopefully, BUT NOT YET CERTAIN) £350 compensation on top of your £176 refund your actual return flight will have cost just £92 ( maths: BA £333 plus paid to Owen £285 = £618. Less refund £176 plus compo £350 = £526. Flight cost return = £92. Ta da). Flight plus shared room = £565. CHEAP
However it wasn’t all smooth sailing………..
The AGM started badly. A masterly understatement if ever there was one. The Henslow Tours office opens early, at 04.15 on Friday morning to be precise. Imagine the scene, your tour rep gets out of bed, bollock naked, and the first thing he sees is a text on his phone. - “BA842 cancelled, you are rebooked a mere 32 hours later at a time that makes accessing your hotel before midday Sunday impossible. Have a nice day. Yours, British Airways”.
It was possibly the worst few hours of my life, and only later did I find I shared it with around 40,000 other people, so around 8,000 organisers like me, sitting naked, stunned, panicked (OK not all of them would have been naked) who suffered the same fate of cancelled flights that weekend. The difference was I bet the other 40,000 did not have the support of people who could step into the breach (as I enjoyed a two hour mental breakdown) and of the tolerance of all the others in the group who did not moan once, just cracked on and fitted in at short notice with the changed plans.
It bears repeating that I knew we were screwed by text from BA at 04.15. Checked it was not a scam. Had meltdown. By 04.40 I’d called Hugh to cancel cars and make a plan. Next called our Chairman Owen. Plans made and amended. Extra passport info obtained. 19 passenger API’s to type by hand, average 50 letters and numbers per person, times 19, almost a 1000 characters to type, get one wrong, you don’t fly. Hugh’s message, just 2 hours after being told of the catastrophe, gave everyone 10 minutes to agree to an unspecified plan at an unspecified price. To everyone’s immense credit everyone did just that.
Two different flights, two different departure airports, two different arrival airports, one was 150 miles from the hotel, eight cars to organise, two speedboats to organise, one hotel to organise to keep rooms past last check in. Refunds to organise, compensation to organise, getting dressed to organise, calming down to organise. And we cracked it. Massive thanks you to Owen (flights and API and paying £4800 of his own cash out) and Hugh ( planning options, cars and talking me down off the ceiling), and to all the members for not moaning, querying or getting in the way, but just doing what you were asked. Fantastic. We all made it in one piece and only a few hours late. Hope the other 40,000 cancelled by BA alone were as lucky.
Interestingly, if we had been with a travel agent I don’t think we’d have done so well. Our flexibility, capability and ability to react and have a workable plan by 06.00 was what got us there only a few hours late. Agents open at 09.00. I’m always going to treasure Hugh’s message at 06.30 saying “I’m pressing the button at 06.40, if you’re not coming message me quickly, otherwise you are GOING”. All he got was silence, possibly no one got the message. Anyway - you all came and thank you!
So, drama resolved, on with the minutes……….
Great hotel, massive pool, excellent food and service. Into Hvar town, lovely place, lovely people, very smart and upmarket, very friendly. Not cheap, but not crazy. 10% off for cash in every restaurant, great weather (Monday excluded). Free day Saturday was taken up with food, booze and banter and the Grand GASS Cap Auction. Sailing Sunday was a success, nobody drowned, great lunch. Monday was slated for the AGM in a nice beach bar restaurant in private (to avoid upsetting couples and families who seem to have an issue with listening to drunks shouting at each other over arcane points of order). Tuesday chilling by the lovely hotel pool and topping up the tan before the boat home and a flight that actually took off!
THE AGM AGENDA
To keep things simple an agenda had been circulated beforehand. Apologies for absence, The Accounts, The Officers, The Meetings, Meeting Budgets, Any Other Business.
THE ACCOUNTS: All is well. The new meetings system meant we came in on budget. EVERYONE HAS PAID THEIR SUBS (a first?). We had a surplus of £278 and a carried forward cash balance of £5,608.
OFFICERS: Owen agreed to carry The Chairmanship into his second year (thank goodness), Ron agreed to keep fiddling the accounts (thank goodness). Brian agreed to remain as CEO and Obergruppenfuher (maybe a mixed blessing) and so all is well at the top. An experienced team lead GASS into its 43rd year.
THE MEETINGS: The new system clearly worked better than the old system. So on with the new system. We re-dealt the cards to allocate new teams of two to each month. This is how it came out
MEETINGS 2024/5
OCT. PUB. WAYNE. STEVE. £900
NOV. PUB. GARY. PETE. £900
DEC. AWAYDAY. OWEN. PHILC. £1300
JAN. PUB. RON. RAY. £900
FEB. ENTERTAINMENT. GRAHAM. STUART. £1100
MAR. PUB. NICK. OLLIE £900
APR. AWAYDAY. HUGH. JOHN. £1300
MAY. ENTERTAINMENT. IAN. PHILR. £1100
JUN. ENTERTAINMENT. ANDY. KEITH. £1100
JUL. AWAYDAY. TONY LEN. £1300
AUG. ENTERTAINMENT. BRIAN. CHRIS. £1100.
Swopsies allowed. Just let me know if anything changes team or meeting wise. In November I will publish any updates. It’s flexible so don’t worry about changes, just keep me in the loop.
MEETING BUDGETS: Ron suggested we reduce the £5,600 cash we hold by about £1,100 a year over 5 years and worry about the outcome in 2030 (those that are still here and still have the ability to worry). That means an extra hundred quid on every meeting, hence the higher budgets shown above (missed that did you?).
THE GASS ‘NO WINE’ RULE: Not to be confused with the ‘no whining’ rule. That was the rule introduced in March 2023 after some serious whining and arguing over the bill and all to do with flipping wine at the table. That rule worked really well until June 2023 when our Chairman wanted a bottle of Premier Cru Chablis but couldn’t be arsed to pay for it himself, so back we went to whining. The issue is that house wine might be £25 a bottle, but if you insist on top end wines they might be £65 a bottle, the difference is equal to the £40 we all pay per month! That however is not actually the issue for around 30-40% of our members WHO EITHER DON’T FUCKING DRINK OR ONLY HAVE A COUPLE. The issue is why on earth should they (1) Have to pay out of funds or surcharges quite so much (and yes, I get the thing about don’t be a girlies about the bill, but only if you get the thing about don’t kick the arse out of it). (2) Have to listen to the repeated moans and bad feeling when it happens, or worse, have to just fume about the overspends being carried out by just the other 30-40% of the members. For clarity I count myself in the honest, fair, upstanding and remaining 20% who do drink but don’t kick the aforesaid arse out of it. Obviously.
The beauty of the NO WINE rule was that it (1) takes an enormous amount of strain off the budgets and (2) meant that you can all have the wine you want, or no wine. AS LONG AS YOU PAY FOR IT YOURSELF. Easy-peasy
From now on Meetings organisers can make full use of the rule if they wish as it leaves so much more budget for entertainment and food, or avoids surcharges. If an organiser uses that rule just make it clear to the venue that you won’t be liable for ANY wine on the final bill and everyone that wants wine, fine or cheap, pays for their own bottle to share or drink alone.
ANY OTHER BUSINESS: To summarise the most important outcomes of the AGM: Len in NOT fatter than he is tall (his tum-wum is 80% of his height, 53v68 inches for those with a morbid and misplaced interest). Owen is still chairman, Owen is a shit High Court judge but the the trial outcomes were a triumph for friendship and common sense, and that one should never ever give our chairman a gavel, fucking lethal, especially to Ron’s phones. Oh, and we all have a nice GASS hat to wear. Some have two, fuck knows why!
SO. To recap for meetings organisers. It’s simples. Tell us WHERE (ideally the ACTUAL postcode of the meeting location, not a different museum or Grahams office). Tell us WHEN, the start time. Only tell us WHAT is going to happen if you want to. Tell us HOW MUCH if there is a surcharge (if there is a surcharge and you don’t want to pay it - don’t come! It’s not optional). Tell us if you are imposing RULES like the NO WINE rule, or any other rule, like Steak £10 extra, it’s your meeting, your rules.
So WWWHR. WHERE,WHEN,WHAT,HOW MUCH, RULES. I so wish I could have come up with a snappier anagram. All suggestions welcome. ‘World Wide Web Human Resources’ is how I remember it. It helps me enormously.
THE GASS COURT DEBACLE
The meeting having closed we moved on to THE GASS COURT: Something that we did last year in Barcelona (the 11 of us who made it- B11!!!) with great success and many laughs. It was intended to be the entertainment for the meeting. Bought back by general acclaim by the eleven AGM attendees from last year because it was really funny, but with added wigs and wooden gavel for the judge. Judge Brunning KC presiding.
THE RESULTS OF THE CASES: Henslow v Else, settled out of court. Smith v Slasher, hung jury, case dismissed. Other cases: Adjourned due to lack of court time and disturbances in the courtroom. Final result, all parties happy and hatchets buried, friendships renewed.
Not quite all parties were happy. The court was not so well received by those who missed last years AGM, who maybe misconstrued the purpose and so failed to get the joke or simply roll with it. Instead, some members ended up getting very wound up and hot under the collar days before anything actually happened, all to no effect. As it turned out the court succeeded in its aims and was really funny for those that got the joke, not so much from the others who sadly suffered a pre-planned sense of humour failure.
GASS is often about piss taking when pissed, and piss taking is not normally a reason to storm out of the room. We all have views, often different views, and we accommodate them. I get that the court idea was not everyone’s idea of fun but the important thing is it was the majorities idea of fun (and it achieved its aims), so maybe just roll with it sometimes guys, maybe even enter into stuff for fun. Not everything we do is everyone’s choice, we are a big group of mixed ages, egos and approaches. The comment I always love most is “This isn’t GASS as I knew it!” Yes it is, it’s always been like it. It's not always confrontational, but it often is, that’s part of the fun of GASS. We are a varied and tough bunch. Piss taking is ingrained. It’s GASS. Just like always. Good God, even angry storming out of AGM’s has been going on for years, so much so it is almost a GASS tradition. Sometimes we even have punch-ups. 2024 was mild by comparison. The court cases were a 10 minute harmless laugh, nothing more, and they succeeded in their aims. GASS is not some sort of modern ‘safe space’. Far fucking from it! Grow a pair. Get stuck in. Have a laugh at someone else’s expense. See what I did there?
Maybe next time we will have some local traditional musicians playing for us (no, that caused a walk out), maybe we should ask for bread rolls to be supplied (no that caused a walk out), maybe we could just enjoy a beer at a bar (no that caused a fight), maybe......
Maybe we could just sit quietly and discuss politics, or dwarfs, or rimming (eeugh!), or Nocturia (look it up)......
So in conclusion, another great AGM. The venue was excellent, lots of great restaurants, not to expensive bearing in mind the surroundings, and IF the worlds favourite airline do decide to pay up the promised refund (£179pp already credited to the 16 group flyers) and the £350pp compensation, fingers crossed, then it will be the cheapest AGM ever. If not then its back to court, this time GASS v B.A. Only time will tell.
REMINDER: The editor of this website feels under NO obligation to tell the truth, be fair and unbiased, or to be objective. The views expressed here are subjective, totally biased, only partly true and to a large extend imagined. No references made to persons living or dead are meant to reflect on any GASS member or to be taken literally. All complaints should be addressed to The Editor, GASS Website, 23 Gnome Towers, Zurich, Switzerland EO987.
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