Day 345 - Prize Giving

I had put my name down as a "maybe" for this morning's golf but, when I opened the curtains and saw that it wasn't actually raining and that the forecast for the day was for 11°C (that's 52°F), I decided that I'd give it a go.  When I go to Burhill (only just on time as the traffic was dire...), the wind was howling and when, for some reason, we had opted for the New Course, I questioned again why I was out there. But shouldn't have: I had a very companionable three-ball, playing with Andy and Des, and although the golf itself was pretty dire, a good time was had by all and it was great to see Andy back on the course after a 6-month post-op layoff.

A quick non-alcoholic drink and then back home to prepare for the evening. Tonight, we are holding the awards Dinner.  This is a relatively recent innovation at the Club and is the occasion when we invite all the 2015 Competition winners to dinner and present them with their prizes, and just as importantly, the chance for them to get a photo taken holding what are some seriously large pieces of silverware.

In previous years, the Awards ceremony had been followed by a speech from the Director of Golf, reminiscing a bit about his time on the Tour.  Pip is no longer at the Club and, anyway, it was probably time for a change.  We had thought about paying for a sporting celebrity to address the dinner but had left it too late to get anything organised, which meant that the buck stopped at the Captain's door.

Lots of Prizes...

Turnout for the evening was very good, though some of the key winners hadn't been able to make it, which was a shame. Nevertheless, we had 80+ people in attendance and around 2/3rds of the prizes would be handed over to their rightful owners.  The food for the evening was very good and the room was in high spirits once we moved onto the actual distribution of the silverware.

Tom, Steve and I had had a rehearsal earlier in the evening and, as it turned out, had set things up pretty well.  Steve, as VC, handled the master of ceremonies' duties efficiently, Tom found the right prize to hand over and I managed to smile 100+ times for the cameras: the whole thing went very smoothly and did not take anything like the length of time we feared (too many memories of long, boring, school prize-givings in the back of our minds!).

I then took over the floor and shared what was I hope a vaguely amusing retrospective on my year as Captain - a great way of rehearsing my AGM speech, even if I did allow myself more latitude than I shall in two weeks time: this was after all, a well-lubricated male audience...  Speech over, Steve closed of proceedings and we migrated downstairs to the bar.

One of the downsides of a Dry January is that you feel a bit out of things at these times. Nevertheless, it wasn't until gone 11:30 pm that I drove home, happy that everything had gone well and a good time had by all!