GASS TROPHIES - PUB MEETING - Courtesy of Phil at the good old Rose & Crown in Hartlip. Its like a second home to GASS. BACK ROW - GOLF TROPHY, SHOOTING TROPHY, BIG COCK, SILLY SAUSAGE, MANNEQIN PIS. FRONT ROW - JCB RACING TROPHY, YARD OF ALE COMPETITION MISSING IN ACTION - THROW UP GOLF, ARM WRESTLING, GASS COFFIN, BREAD BOWL COVERING THE BIG COCK - THE CHAIRMANS NECKLACE It was lovely to see the trophies on display and get a memorial picture of (almost) all of them in one place at one time. The interesting points bought up at the meeting were as follows:- The Yard of Ale trophy was made by Steve, in Woolwich Arsenal workshops entirely at the cost to the taxpayer. Hand blown miniature yard of ale, solid mahogany base, rough cost? About £500 even back then in 1984! The JGB trophy - the same, but the model JCB certainly cost less than a hand blow glass item. The Cock, from Chris's chanisaw meeting is impressive to say the least. The Manneqin Pis was not awarded at the last AGM as Brian has been coveting it for the past three years, and so it was awarded to Tony for appalling driving of a golf buggy. Wow! Big stuff. Eeven Tony felt that was a bit tame. The Throw-up Golf trophy. Allegations were made against an absent member who was accused of garnishing (legal term for seizing, or as we say, nicking) the trophy for showing off in his billard room. Will all members with a Billiard room please stand up. Nick. The Chairman's Bread Roll Bowl is also missing. The bowl being famous for being the cause of Ex-Chairman Brice's legal action to prove bread roll throwing was a terrible and a non-GASS behaviour being thrown out of court. Imagine the fuss when an actual Chairmans Bread Roll Bowl, given to the chair to hold his soft doughy ammunition was produced to the jury!!! Brice lost the case and faced costs. The cost was contimually being reminded as to how bad his selective memory has become. Maybe John has it. The Silly Sausage Award was (I think) awarded to Hugh for one of his solar panels that came adrift and smashed four very expensive cars, silly sausage! BY THE WONDERS OF FAKE NEWS, BRIAN BOTH MANAGED TO TAKE THIS PHOTO, AND BE IN IT. THE BEST GASS TROPHY - AWARDED FOR BEING THE BIGGEST PRAT ON AN AGM The famous Mannequin Pis, he deserves something better than badly driving a Golf Cart in 2026 in Albanian. Come on guys! Be bigger prats this year. Well done Phil, meeting under budget, again. See Andy, I told you £40 was fine as a monthly fee, it was fine in 1995 and it is fine now. If only I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, none of the UK's current dramas would have happend. Nobody listens to me! Probably nobody even reads this rubbish. I am wasted on you lot!

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.

Slap up dinner and a music quiz, courtesy of Chris and Ray Well courtesy of Chris actually. Ray's sole input was to tell everyone where, when, what. Ray failed on all three counts and told everyone precisely the square root of fuck all. Cue rapid ring round at the last moment by Chris. We all turned up at the appointed hour, miles from anywhere, on a dark and rainy night to be enthralled by a very hairy man and an amazingly complicated and difficult music quiz. A very good music quiz, it has to be said. Good if you had any knowledge of music. Not so good with a load of not just 'tone deaf' musical ignoramuses, but actually functionally deaf ignoramuses. 30 questions on close typed answer sheets, advanced audio questions played on a 1930's reel-to-reel tape recorder, and teams of four. It hardly behoves me to announce the winners, but here we go. ME! Note the amazing winners cup! Note the amazing T shirts! Chris (and Ray) had very cleverly come up with the wrinkle that you had to be wearing a rock concert T shirt to avoid a £5 fine. Everyone except the other organiser (Ray) managed. Then the pub served the most amazing three course dinner since we last dined at La Gavroche. To be fair to them they were constrained by our budget, but they still pushed the boat out for GASS, proper pub grub. On the bright side they contributed to the GASS annual budget as the whole bang-shoot came in £280 under. a massive saving, and well done Chris (and Ray). So a massive thank you to our quizmaster who did a cracking job, mainly in awarding first place to the best team at the table, good call! He knew to thank 'The Father of GASS', mainly because Pete slipped him a tenner at the start. NEXT MEETING - GASS TROPHIES. Bring out your trophies! Bring out your trophies! Yard of Ale, Throw Up Golf, JCB, Mannaquin Pisse, Golf Cup, The Big Turd, et al..... You don't lose them, we all just want to see them, and re-award some.

A nice bite of buffet and a sketch artist in a dive bar in Chatham..... What a way to kick off the new year.......... Organised by John, a man who in the past has single headedly kept the annual GASS budget on track by producing excellent meetings for well under the allowed level of expenditure, keep up the good work! So (as I am reliably informed, I was not present, I am writing this drivel from a beach bar in Zanzibar) the meeting was held in fire trap of a cellar under a micro brewery in the less salubrious part of good old Medway, which is already well under the normal salub levels for The Garden of England. One way in, one way out. Could have been the end of GASS if the buffet had included sparklers in a cake setting afire the ceiling!!!!!!!!!! Anyway, I am reliably informed there was an excellent buffet, and a welcome opportunity for members to circulate and converse, as opposed to rush to sit at a big long table and talk only to the person unlucky enough to have sat next to them. Plus a sketch artist.......................... Who sketched this..................... What they looked like as charred corpses after the cellar fire caught GASS unaware The sketch was then auctioned and a stand off not dissimilar to when Brian bought the 'massive wooden cock' for a small fortune, JB was tricked into overbidding an apparently keen Nick by £1, and ended up with it for £41. In grateful amazement that his work had sold for more than the value of the paper it was scribbled on - the sketch artist then knocked off his take on John's perplexed visage on having to cough up an extra £41 towards GASS funds thus reducing the meeting costs yet further. It is always worth meeting organisers considering the buffet option as it does lead to more circulating and chatting which can make a nice change and certainly cuts cost. Judging from the comments on WhatsApp I see the meeting was a great success and was a good way to kick off the year. Well done JB. 2025 was a good year for meetings and a bad year for the membership, losing Ollie, Keith and Phil R, and none to the grim reaper! All to getting fed up with one or more of us, or in some cases depositing substances on one of us. Let's try harder this year chaps!! Be nice!!

CHRISTMAS AT THE IVY, CANTERBURY A formal (well, funny jackets to brighten the event, make it more festive), and SECRET SANTA. A really good turnout for a private room and full festive gubbins bash. A variety of festive jackets in evidence. Met in a local boozer for pre-loading before diving into the high priced (but very nice) venue already nicely toasted. Secret Santa gave us it's normal entertainment, its normal complete inability to keep the rules simple, and the now traditional sight of Wayne in a blow up suit of some sort. Unlike previous secret Santa debacles this one did not end in indiscriminate damage to the venue, which as they really do know how to charge was probably a wise move on our part. Despite this it was very funny so I will let the pictures tell the story............... Starting with THE GASS GRACE, located by Tony, apparently from years and years ago in the days of yore...... THE GASS GRACE - AN ODE TO LYING, STEALING. CHEATING, AND DRINKING Gentlemen, if you must lie, lie to save a friend. If you must steal, steal a ladies heart. If you must cheat, cheat death. If you must drink, then drink with GASS!!! Well said that man, and so we continued on into the night, wrapping paper torn asunder as we plundered the pile of gifts..... I AM NOT AMUSED - STUPID BOYS! ANOTHER GREAT CHRISTMAS, WELL DONE TONY!!

Held at OLIVERS in Rochester and organised by Nick and Wayne, great concept, great meeting, really, really funny. Private room in Oliver's with a very nice dinner. The members were introduced to Joe, our resident magician for the evening, who performed a few warm up tricks and then we were split into four teams and each team was taken outside and taught one magic trick. Then we had the performances. First up was The Chairman, who did a really good trick involving a quite complicated manipulation of a great big dice in a box, very clever. Followed by Chris performing, or part performing, part Joe getting stuck in, a card trick. Not bad. Then Phil balancing a cup of water on John's head with out spilling a drop. Then came the celebrity act of the evening. Brian and Debbie McGee, a truly wonderful magician accompanied by his lovely and gorgeous assistant Debbie (aka Bellie, and boy, did he show his belly). As the person writing this drivel I would normally praise myself to the heavens, but in this case I have to say that full credit goes to Debbie for true comedic value added to my natural gift for magic. Bloody brilliant! A really enjoyable evening was had by all with a great twist on the table magic concept. Almost as good as the GASS magic night held many years ago where we all purchased a quality trick and performed in front of the membership one at a time. That was back in March 2016..... If you want a walk down memory lane then use the link below to access the old minutes from 2012-2016. Scroll down through some hilarious memories of meetings gone by to near the end of the file, and there we all were. It really is worth scrolling through our history. There are actually FOUR volumes in all going right back to where the GASS book left off. And here is another memory from those old days of yore. Gallagher's Quarry, 2016, with the biggest stone ever dug out! The running joke that Brian wanted to be buried on his country estate (love saying that!) under a fuck off great big stone. Well Ian obliged with the 5.4 ton monster back in 2016, and Hugh obliged a few weeks back by bringing up a 22 ton 360 excavator and shifting the bugger to its final resting place in the new Stede Court Estate Garden of Remembrance. Now partially finished to honour first the passing of Sara's dad, and hopefully me in 30 years time. I really do recommend trawling through VOLUMES 1-4 of the old minutes, it is so funny, and may even contain ideas for re-runs of old meetings! Well done Nick and Wayne, great evening, many thanks!

A lovely Rochester pub meeting, BattleKarts in Sittingbourne, a take away dinner and a visit to The CUBE in Docklands. Not bad for the winter months. JANUARY - THE ROYAL CROWN in Rochester for dinner. A pub meeting, most winter meetings are pub meetings, at The Royal Crown in Rochester, a nice dinner in convivial surroundings. Alaways a nice quite one after New Years Eve. Thanks to Ron and Ray. FEBRUARY - An ENTERTAINMENT meeting, BATTLEKART Normally when driving Go karts the venue get all protective over their babies, you get a real bollocking if you bash into another kart, sissies! This is different. A battle while driving go karts, organised by Stuart, with a dinner at The Tudor Rose pub afterwards. Much more like it. Well done Stuart and Graham, good choice, never done that before. MARCH - PUB MEETING - TAKE AWAY DINNER A take away dinner at a pub in Rochester, The Rising Sun. A real old school GASS meeting organised by Nick which featured a dinner comprising of an actual take-away being delivered to a drinks-only pub. And a proper Medway pub at that. On the corner of a residential street of terraced houses. Sort of place that would be full of old men in flat caps nursing a pint of mild and bitter and petting a whippet. If it was in Yorkshire...... This was full,of shaven heads and bull mastiffs, but who cares? We are big boys and so we crowded together for safety and drank our sarsaparilla like men. We couldn't wait to tuck in! On the bright side (and somewhat unsurprisingly) Nick came in several hundred pounds under budget on this one so we can only say congratulations!!! GASS LUNCH CLUB at The CUBE in Docklands With lunch afterwards at Hawksmoor Steakhouse. A good team turned up for this very upmarket version of the TV game THE CUBE. A few sherberts before in a cocktail bar to make sure we would be crap at these games of reaction and logic. Then it was pick your team pairs time. As one of the oldest there Brian was keen to get a young upstart as a teammate, someone brimming with vim and vigour, somebody like say Wayne, whippet thin, strong as steel, kick like a mule, or maybe Owen, tall, fit, squash player, supple, youngest member. Or maybe Ian, strong as an ox, fast as a striking thingamybob. There was plenty to choose from. Who did I get??????????? Pete, about to spring into lazer like action. Yup, the bastards all teamed up and left me with Pete! The oldest, certainly not the fastest or the supplest, and already standing on the outside of three large gin & tonics. Pete noticed my initial alarm, I really must try harder to keep my emotions from showing so plainly on my face. He was miffed. Fair enough. As far as I was concerned I was fucked , so honours even. But we teamed up. Had too, we were the last two :) Let the games begin................... Complicated, active, real puzzels, all sorts of different games testing all sorts of real and varied skills - AND PETE AND I ALMOST WON THE BLOODY THING. We came a very close and credible second, talk about the tortoise and the hare (Google it). And it was mainly down to PETE! Plus a bit of judicious cheating that only old people are good at, the sneaky bastards. Well done Pete. Talk about an object lesson for me. Ever since I try and team up with Pete!! Another excellent GASS LUNCH CLUB organised yet again by Owen. Top notch!

A real trio of activity meetings. Bugger off anyone who says GASS is getting boring (Graham). Multi sport at Diggerland and Burlesque, massive ZIPWIRE, and AXE throwing...... I mean that is really good, for £40 each! APRIL - DIGGERLAND for a multi-sports evening with electric quad bikes as the star of the show. Hugh laid on a proper challenge for the bike riders. Brand new electric quads which were as frisky as a young unbroken colt. Literally hair trigger reactions, the slightest squeeze on the accelerator meant a 0-60 spasm and a nasty skid as the brakes were hastily applied. Really took some getting used to. Then Skittles with 360 excavators. Then a treasure hunt in a the children's multi story play area. Then a full dinner. Then an amazing Burlesque show. I have to say it was amazing and brilliantly done Hugh. It just shows what you can buy with £40 when GASS members put their minds to it!! Sorry, couldn't find the pics of the super quads, so group photos will have to suffice. Just imagine the quads off to the left above. Clouds of dust, great big skids, amazing machines, really big...... Too many group shots I hear you say? Sorry. Enjoy the one of the excavators. And enjoy even more the eventual winners. Well deserved I say. The assembled competitors replete after an amazing dinner. MAY - Off to HALLING LAKES for a massive ZIP WIRE and a Pizza supper afterwards. Superbly organised by Ian. A really interesting venue at the lakes on probably the only cold and windy day all summer. But we persevered. Biggest zip wire in England apparently. GASS are zip wire experts having done the one at Bluewater, the pop up one in London, plus others to numerous to mention. This was a long one and a cold one. But great fun, especially for Andy who still has not conquered his deep fear of heights and flimsy metal grid floors that show you only too plainly where you might end up if you trip. Four at a time, off we all went, well not Andy obs. He was trembling at the bottom of the stairs, not fear, just freezing cold in May. I didn't get any pics of the pizzas, you know what a man eating a pizza and drinking a beer form a can looks like. If not then you have no imagination! JUNE - AXE THROWING, ARCHERY & RIFLE SHOOTING Another test of our killer abilities with archery, pistol shooting and axe throwing. All included at a very down home sort of range in the Dartford area. On arrival it looked a bit like the sort of place where the locals just bought their own guns, axes and bows along from the house for a bit of one on one mayhem. We were more circumspect and settled for throwing the axes at targets, the arrows at the the big straw things and the guns at paper squares and tin cans. Yes, a bit gay, but we are not actually from Dartford or Gravesend so we are not as adept as them at dodging the incoming. As you can see from the video below some of are also shit at the outgoing.................... To be honest we were pretty shit at a lot of it, so we buggered off down the pub, but first we gave it a go..... Thanks to Keith and Andy for the battle skills, thanks to Ian for the zip wiring, thanks to Hugh and John for the Diggerland event and the Burlesque. All great and imaginative meetings. Lets keep them coming guys!

Pub Dinner instead of heat stressed eagles, a very expensive GASS Lunch Club meet at The LUCKY CAT, and a very enjoyable CHAIN SAW SCULPTING meeting at Chris's where a massive prick was born. JULY - DINNER AT THE WINDMILL PUB: After stormy weather stopped us petting Owls and Eagles. This was Tony's Entertainment evening and he had a great programme for us to pet birds of prey at a wildlife centre. Sadly the extreme heat put the kibosh, apparently the birds don't do sunbathing. So Tony quickly and efficiently pivoted to a nice dinner at The Windmill in Hollingbourne. LATE JULY - GASS LUNCH CLUB - At THE LUCKY CAT The lunch club went upmarket for the end of JULY meeting. Owen picked The LUCKY CAT at 22 Bishopsgate, one of London's tallest buildings. In one of London's most expensive restaurants. Before that a touch of clay pigeon shooting in a nearby video gallery, outright winner was the organiser, Mr Brunning. Once the gunfire subsided it was on to the table, and on to one of the most expensive lunches for quite some time. The total bill was north of £2,000, and the best was on particular member who so enjoyed Waygu steak that he scoffed £390 worth of it washed down with £290 worth of sparkling wine, and a £13 chocolate truffle instead of a 'waffer thin mint'. All for the princely sum of £750.95 inclusive of a cheeky 15% service charge. That is what I call lunch!!!! AUGUST - CHAIN SAW SCULPTING AT CHRIS'S A meeting at Chris's for CHAIN SAW SCULPTING and a catered BBQ. Organisers Chris & Brian, but mainly Chris doing all the heavy lifting. Brilliant sunshine, tables in the garden, a professional chef providing a lovely dinner. Lashings of booze, even a bottle of sherry for Hugh. Plus our chain saw expert who kicked off by handing a saw to a bunch of drunks to chop up a log into the thinnest possible roundel, winner Chris, second Brian. Then it was on to the main item. The sculpting of a massive prick. The photos do indeed do it justice the monster..................... Its looking good, looking big ................... Now that is a bunch of cock sculpters if ever I saw one! Some of Hugh's birthday present ideas for Chris .......... At the dinner that night the massive prick was raffled. It was one of those daft raffles where there were two people after the sculpture, so the price just kept going up and up. £61 flipping quid Brian paid just for a joke birthday present for 'Mick the Greek'. As you can see below Mike was pleasantly surprised. He said it was the nicest massive prick he has ever been given in all his 74 years. He then promptly hid the thing from sight in his deepest shed, probably never to see the light of day again, and who can blame him? No accounting for taste, no appreciate of real art, bloody Greek philistine!

These minutes will be brief, mainly as the person writing them was not there to enjoy the trip. The CEO, Brian Henslow, missed his first AGM ever. Pathetic excuse, his daughter was getting married and would have taken it askance if he sent a stand in to walk her down the aisle! So the minutes will be restricted to a couple of pics and a set of truncated accounts. Accounts first. ACCOUNTS 2024/25: Ron decided not to send me a list of the individual meeting costs but did comment that NICK'S 'take away grub' meeting contributed the most to a modest surplus. We started the year with £5,608 and ended it with £5,889, not bad considering we budgeted an extra £1,100 on meeting spend. If further proof that the new meetings system really does work then look no further. AND we had a whole load of excellent meetings in the year. I have actually listed them in the OCTOBER minutes for your enjoyment. And so on to what I think happened in Puerto Banus....................... Everyone made the plane and got safely to Spain ......... No wait. Not everyone made it. Ron was a late drop out. Reason: Ron thought it perfectly normal that when in Verona (as in Gentlemen of said Italian town, Shakespeare) you put everything valuable in a backpack - phone, passport, money, credit cards. And when you fancy a gelato you drop said backpack on a chair and queue up for said iced lolly. Thus rather predictably losing all your lolly to a passing toerag! No passport, no travel senor!. So Ron was a much missed no show. Everyone else made it. And enjoyed a succession of lunches, dinners, golf and sunbathing. Plus a bit of kip on the side. Of course, not all the time was spent sleeping, eventually Hugh woke up as a reinvented trendy version of his former self. Not a scrap of Diggerland branded clothing to be seen in the new ensemble. That's a first! Looking good!! Still wearing the trendy gear at one of the long lunches between rounds of golf. And another lunch at another trendy location, this time a beach club. Of course the observant among you will have spotted the deliberate mistake?? And I don't mean Pete still wearing the same shirt! .................... Answer below. So another excellent AGM, this year organised by Owen, and only poor Brian was missing from the normal crew. Well - and Ron, obviously. ANSWER: For the hawk eyed among you, not only is Pete wearing what must be his go to holiday shirt, but Brian and Ron are magically sitting together at the AGM table. How was this miracle achieved? By mistakenly including a picture from the AGM when we last went to PB, that's how. We are looking forward to next year.

A pub meeting organised by Gary, who has got the logic of a pub meeting down to a fine art. Hold it just down the road from his house. Again. Great evening! Not the best photo ever, but it sets the scene. 16 of the remaining 19 sat down to an enjoyable dinner that came in under the £900 budget by a healthy £120. Mainly because so many members are now not chucking high value wines down their necks with gay abandon. Yes, 16 of the REMAINING 19 members. Not 22 members, just 19 now. Since we lost Slasher soon after the last AGM for a crime not unadjacent to his new GASS nickname, we next lost The Doctor (who to be fair has been in and out of GASS on a regular basis for the past 30 years), then we lost Keith who basically can't afford membership any longer (despite paying two years subs for a Waygu steak and chips and a glass of sparkling wine only a short while back. So here is a quick resume of the matters discussed, or to more faithfully reflect what actually happened, here is a quick resume of what CEO Henslow short-cutted all the normal protocols of GASS meetings to ram through without even the courtesy of a show of hands. DO WE WANT NEW MEMBERS?: We now have 19 members. Its 11 years or more since the last new member, Owen, joined our illustrious ranks. As the years have passed and we have all got older and way more eccentric, it is probable that we will no longer be attractive to new members. What chance would they stand of appreciating the motley crew that we now represent so the decision was taken that we would not make any concerted effort to recruit new members . But if someone suitable did appear then they should come to THREE meetings before being proposed. Ideally anyone proposed needs to own their own business or be self employed, or at least pretty senior. SHOULD WE INCREASE THE FEES?: As membership has dropped so has income. By £1440 a year. At the same time we increased meeting budgets by £1100. So logically we need to address the £2500 annual shortfall. Raising fees to £50 covers that in one fell swoop. But as the cash available at the end of the 2024/25 financial year actually increased slightly then we would leave things as they are and review the fees at the next AGM. BUY YOUR OWN BOTTLE OF WINE: With regard to drinks at the meetings. It was pointed out that a rule that insisted no BOTTLES of wine could go on the bill did not stop someone drinking 10 GLASSES of wine instead. This somewhat juvenile argument was defeated by the fact that at this meeting 5 members where not drinking alcohol, and of the remaining 11, most were happy with beer, and in any case 10 medium glasses of wine was equal to two and a half bottles. Really??? The simple fact is that we HAD to stop some members ordering wines at £50-£60 a pop. Not only did it blow the budget it took the piss of those members not drinking and led to understandable tensions. The rule is simple. If you want to drink wine - then any wine the pub normally sells by the glass is fine. If you want better wine then just buy a bottle and pay for it. It really is not that difficult. LAST YEAR WAS A GOOD MEETINGS YEAR, WELL DONE ORGANISERS: Bearing in mind we are just a group of mates, getting a bit old, and we only go out Tuesday evenings, I for one are pretty impressed with the programme from last year. In fact ignore what I said about new members, I'd join GASS for the fun and the meetings despite it being full of loons. Starting in December last year, this is what we did. All for £40 a month......... CHRISTMAS DINNER AT HUGHS PUB DINNER AT THE ROYAL CROWN BATTLE KARTS TAKE AWAY DINNER DIGGERLAND RACES THE CUBE AND LUNCHCLUB IN DOCKLANDS ZIPWIRE AXE THROWING, ARCHERY AND RIFLE SHOOTING DINNER AT THE WINDMILL, WAS SUPPOSED TO BE EAGLES. LUCKY CAT LUNCHCLUB CHAIN SAW SCULPTURES AGM IN PUERTO BANUS MEETINGS THIS YEAR: The format is the same as last year. 4 PUB meetings at £900, 4 ENTERTAINMENT meetings at £1100, 3 AWAYDAYS at £1300. Surcharges allowed to suit the size and scope of the meeting. Organisers, don't be embarrassed about adding a surcharge, we'd all prefer to pay more for quality. NOV - NICK/WAYNE - ENTERTAINMENT. Olivers Rochester DEC - TONY/STUART - AWAYDAY - Xmas at The Ivy Canterbury. Christmas Jackets and Secret Santa. JAN - IAN/JOHN - PUB FEB - CHRIS/RAY - ENTERTAINMENT MAR - GRAHAM/RON - AWAYDAY APR - SOMEBODY - PUB MAY - STEVE/ANDY - ENTERTAINMENT JUN - BRIAN - AWAYDAY JUL - OWEN/HUGH - ENTETAINMENT AUG - BRIAN/LEN - PUB SEP - AGM - Montenegro, Riga, Lanzarote, Monaco, Lisbon, Berlin, Albania? AGM OFFICER ELECTION: As in the previous two years a sigh of relief was sighed when OWEN agreed to another year as CHAIRMAN. His ability to cross the generations, ignore bullshit, calm Graham, organise top quality GASS lunch club events, and generally keep a lid on things is invaluable. RON very kindly agreed to keep cooking the books. Ron's ability to add up is invaluable. Most other Ron-related attributes are pretty shit. Timekeeping, organisation, ability to hold onto a passport, use of a GPS, and many more. But as GASS Chief Financial Officer he is indubitably top dog! BRIAN agreed in absentia to remain as CEO. Less siad about his abilities the better. So on that note the meeting ended, below budget, and a good time had by all.

Because WhatsApp has taken over as the medium for communications with GASS, the website has fallen behind a little. BUT, it is still important for historical reasons, nothing beats being able to go back years and see what we were all up to and what we all looked like back in the day! So here I am trying to catch up a little. OCTOBER - Wayne, as organiser, did the sensible thing and held his meeting just up the road from his house, at THE BOWL PUB. Nice venue, a bit like a massive school canteen with a small country pub attached. We sat in the canteen and enjoyed a nice dinner. PUB meetings are in the majority in the winter so expect a few coming up. NOVEMBER - Gary did the same and held his meeting down the road from his house too. THE ROSE & CROWN was this months dinner and piss up. GASS LUNCH CLUB - Still going strong for the lunchers. Owen organised a private room at THE IVY in Canterbury for this one. Great day with a CHRISTMAS theme. DECEMBER - CHRISTMAS EXTRAVAGANZA. Black Tie, excellent caterers, superb dinner. Hugh did us proud! At his home, in his house with the massive upstairs function room. And the entertainment was SECRET SANTA which, as always, went down a riot. Hell of a riotous evening! Well done Hugh!!!