King’s Lynn Plus

The new Programme has now been added on the Programme page – this includes the date for our mid-summer party, now confirmed as 17th/18th July – the theme for this year is a Christmas Party. Why? Because it seemed a good idea at the time…….!!

Christine T

This is the new improved Kings Lynn Plus website, just gone officially live – hope you like it!

There are bound to be a few glitches, the formating needs a bit of work in places, and I know the photos page is slow in loading – those things we are working on. If there is anything else you notice to be a problem, please do let us know.

Christine T

Its official – Kings Lynn Plus has the best website of the Area! We received the award at the East Anglia Area Conference (or Anglia and South East Area as we are now re-named). Although the site is under re-development we were still picked to win the annual award- watch this space for completion of the new-look site, in the meantime we will carry on keeping you up to date with events past and present attended or run by Kings Lynn Plus.

Christine T

As always the club planned to have Christmas meal for all the members and their families, this year we gave into persuasion from the landlord and thought we should use our current venue, who had this year gained a new chef.

The first sign that things weren’t going to plan was the difficulty we were having getting a set menu for a set price, but once this was agreed things were looking up…..until the chef left!! Poor Paul had about two weeks notice that we were not likely to be getting our Christmas meal after all and wisely made contingency plans at what had become his local for saturday night relaxation. All was not lost!

As it turned out, we had an excellent meal, a carvery (I had the veggie option, Glamorgan sausages – yum!) and a very entertaining evening out – phew! It was another opportunity to get most of the members of the club all together in one place to socialise, something that only happens a few times a year.

Our New Year’s party was held again this year at Paul & Dawn’s house, with a great buffet put on for us by Dawn C, with some rather tasty Baileys profiteroles provided by Dawn P (not that some people actually got to see them……well they were very good!!)

Some playstation games, some Singstar (no I didn’t!!), a touch of casino……and of course the obligatory countdown to the New Year followed by everyone rushing for the mobile phones to send and receive New Years greetings…..messages from the kitchen to people in the dining room in some cases – not quite sure why…

And so a new year in King’s Lynn plus has started – plans are afoot for the summer do, date set for WASH 2009 and elections for both the group and WASH to be held very soon. I wonder what this year will bring……

Well, the biggest Plus event of the year has been and gone, and I can’t help thinking how quickly it went after all the time we spent on the planning of it!

The idea for this year was to hold a 25th birthday celebration, with a reunion feel about it, inviting any ex-members we were still in contact with, and it was great to see so many people that haven’t been to WASH for a while having a wonderful time – just see what you’ve been missing?!!

For the organising committee it was an extremely hectic weekend, but as always worth the effort – with masquerade ball, casino afternoon, bands, party games, birthday cakes and much more. Presentations were made to Keith and Wendy, both from the rest of the WASH committee and also from Searles, as a thank you for the years of work that have been put into the event since its beginning.

There were also a couple of member’s birthdays to celebrate too, so a complete party atmosphere all weekend! After the bands and disco in the evening, the usual caravan parties were held, with members of the disco and sound crews also attending! A little alcohol was flowing…..as usual!

And thats it, all over again for another year. Amaxing how quickly it arrives and goes every year – but the effects of lack of sleep last on for a while….!!

Christine T

As you can see the page layout on this blog is slightly different from the rest of the site – this is a trial of a new look to the whole site, and eventually I will change the whole thing to look like this – you can see from the tabs above that I have made a start.

Unfortunately there is a lot going on Plus-wise and otherwise in my life at present, not least of which is the preparate for WASH 25 (less than 3 weeks to go!), so work on this site is temporarily halted.

Hopefully I will be able to resume making the alterations shortly, along with learning how this new site is going to work from an upkeep and editing point of view. In the meantime, if you want to navigate the existing site you will need to work from the previous home page which will have all the working links (http://kingslynnplus.org.uk, in case you have closed the previous window or bypassed the original home page). From here you will be able to see the current programme, map, photographs etc.

Please bear with me with this work in progress…!!

The weekend of 26th September saw a few of us reverting to our childhood and playing with toy cars once again, in the event that was the Kings Lynn Plus Scalextric Challenge. Kings Lynn Group were joined by some friends from other groups from various places around the country for an evening of mayhem!

The venue for the racing was Electric Tracks Ltd of Spalding, where they have permanent layouts of several well known UK and European racing tracks. We were giving a quick run down of the rules of the centre; 1. no running, 2. no climbing on the track tables, 3 no drinks in the racing area; and then we started racing – 4 cars on each track, with 4 tracks out of 8 in use at any one time – 8 minutes per track to complete as many laps as we could.

I am certain that rule 3 was adhered to, rule 2 very nearly not, by those of us with short arms who couldn’t reach their cars when they came off the track, and rule no 1 was virtually impossible to stick to! When your car has just careered off of the track into the barrier, and you are only seconds behind or in front, its very difficult to walk, not run, to the point where your car left the track, put it back on and walk, not run, back to your controller!!

All of this caused much hilarity, with people (and cars) all over the place, and a lot of unintended exercise by the less careful drivers, particularly on the Donnington Park track which was around 15 foot from one end to the other! At the end of the evening the number of laps were added up, and a very close result was achieved. The winner was Stephen, Chris from Brentwood came second, and third place was shared by myself, and Matt fom Sollihul group.

It was then back for some food and liquid refreshment at The Blue Bell pub at Whaplode St Catherine (in the middle of nowhere!) where the staff did us proud by serving us up an excellent meal at gone 10pm at night! This was actually a temporary home for the weekend for myself and Stephen, Chris, Iain from Fareham, and Matt and Rob from Sollihul, as we had pitched tents in the overflow car park on Friday night, and already enjoyed the hospitality, and locally brewed beer, of the pub the previous night. We had spent the daytime hours of Saturday wandering around the town of Spalding, visiting a historical building and gardens, and playing boules (non-flashing, or at least switched off!) in the pub car park.

After keeping the staff at the pub up long past their bedtimes, the campers returned to their tents, and before traveling home the next day sampled the delights of the English Breakfast at a local truck stop type cafe.

Everyone who attended said they really enjoyed the event, so maybe we are looking at a repeat next year, to be open to anyone nationally within Plus who wants to join us – we might even manage to give away a trophy or prizes next time, who knows!

Christine T

Not too long a title for an event then!!!

And what an event it was! This is usually a good party for us, because it takes reasonably minimal organising over the weekend itself and we can relax and enjoy ourselves too as well as being hosts to members of other groups.

Friday night was very laid back this year, pizza and chinese takeaway eaten in the party tent or “chill out zone” outside of the main hall, washed down with a glass of two of punch from the seemingly self-emptying punchbowl (note to self – must make more punch next time..)!! A quick competition to name the alcohol from small pictures of bits of labels, which was in the end won by Dawn P, one of our own members!

A run out to Beers of Europe on saturday morning was followed in the afternoon by a game of rounders in The Walks in Kings Lynn. I did my best to represent the Kings Lynn Group, and somehow ended up in the winning team – result!!

The evening BBQ went very well, the weather once again holding out for us. An excellent spread of salads and such, put on by the two Dawns and their able helpers, was available for us in the hall, and the BBQ itself was supplied by Dave & Sherrie – not like any other BBQ that you will have ever seen! The disco afterwards was supplied by Adam Redshaw who did a brilliant job once again.

After the disco finished, we adjourned once again to the party tent, for chatting and chilling out, and out in the field a game of petanque in the dark with flashing boules, which seems to become a custom at the Kings Lynn do, was played. Another custom seems to be not going to bed until it starts to get light, and it would be a shame to break a tradition wouldn’t it…..

I don’t have any photos of the event, if anyone does have some they would be happy for me to use, please get in touch – I have, however, included on the photographs page a link to some video that was shot by a Plus member. I think its rather good!

Christine T

Not long to go now until the Kings Lynn Plus Summer Party at Tottenhill – about 2 1/2 weeks to be exact. Invites have gone out, bookings have started coming in. Beers of Europe have once again agreed a 10% discount for attendees.

Three of us went to visit the hall last night, just to have a look at the camping area and plan where the party tent would go – we were met by a lot of rabbits and hundreds of midges!! Don’t think the rabbits will be a problem, but I certainly recommend insect repellent and citronella in abundance!

A few last minute things for us to do, but we’re all looking forward to an excellent party again this year.

Christine T

For a few years now we’ve been threatening to have a Eurovision party, and this year Dave & Sherrie kindly offered to host the event, complete with barbeque and plenty of floor to sleep on!

After consuming endless amounts of chicken, sausages and burgers, together with various salads, we adjourned to the living room to watch the spectacle that is Eurovision.

Sherrie organised a sweepstake, and we each gained one or two countries to root for. Tp be honest a lot of the songs sounded very similar to me, some of the outfits rather odd, and as for the russian ice-skater……..obviously did the trick for them though!

We added our own comments to Terry’s, as the voting went on and the winners were announced – although I still don’t think they could hear us shouting at the TV….

(and we musn’t tell Jamie who won……!!!)

Christine T