You're Under Starters Orders

Event no.2 did indeed take place at the PTE club on Millers Road, Byker on Monday 24th April 2006, but not without a scare for Terry, who arrived at the club at 6.45 to begin setting up for the evening's entertainment. The staff unlocked the Concert Room for me and helped me dig out the screen and projector then left me to it. Except that five minutes later they were back to tell me the Do was cancelled! All I could do was stare in disbelief for a few seconds, then managed to ask a few pertinent questions, like "who?" and "when?". It seems that a few days earlier someone, persona not known, did indeed ring up and cancell it. However, the Hooded One also told the Stewardess that they would instead be having a small meeting in the Lounge! After a phone call or two they came back to me and said I could continue setting up and they'd wait a while to see if anyone else turned up. Great start to the night for me, eh? Whoever you are, thanks for nowt, bastard. Moan over.

Around 7.00pm we had the first signs of activity at the door, and a slow trickle of familiar-looking faces arrived, eagerly seeking out alcohol. Like last time, unfortunately, they had to walk around to the Bar to get served as I had suggested it wasn't worth employing extra staff for the anticipated numbers. We'd had a couple of apologies, a few I know of being Paul Marshall, Brian Mills, Stuart Craig and Ant Arrowsmith (all working), and it could have been a very cosy get together indeed. However, we also had some fresh faces turning up in the shape of Kenny Kerr, Simon Davidson, Andrew and Paul Dickinson and Kristian Walker so it was great to see the last generation of riders in attendance and a couple of older ones.

We ran through the original presentation from last year for those who hadn't seen it, and for those who were a bit bleary-eyed last time. Once again George Taylor insisted that the 60's/70's team was the best ever, resulting in uproar once more. Following that, Diamond geezer Keith Dyer compered his short but very controversial quiz with questions on general knowledge, speedway and cycle speedway. That really got the party going, and the Old Codgers table won it by a point (26) from More Old Codgers (25), the 80's Crew (21) and The Younguns (18).

Those who turned up last time were shown a presentation with as much old video and photographs as we could dig up, so we repeated that and again Keith brought a good selection of memorabilia to get tongues wagging. We followed that up with the videos available from the Hull Challenge Match programme, then Terry's five poor rides in last year's Veterans Final at Wednesfield. After that MidAirCrisis did a bit of Mountain Biking recruitment video with footage of Jason dodging trees and we finished off trawling through Terry's collection of random cycle speedway photos on-screen.

Two riders joined us following the 2005 reunion and we hope to catch a few more this time round. Don't be shy, lads, get your bikes out!

One probable outcome is that we'll again be travelling down to Hull for another friendly challenge match. This time, however, we have riders queuing up to get in the team, and we may need a 12-man formula to fit everyone in! John Wilson did the name collecting and managed to trap everyone while they were still sober, or at least the ones that hadn't called in at every swill counter on their way to the PTE club.

 All-in-all, another very successful night with a few surprising absentees compensated by a sprinkling of new faces.

ps     got a text from Ashie on Tuesday lunchtime, he couldn't get away from his chores to attend but apologises to all. We'll see him at Hull anyway. AND if anyone bumps into Gess Atkinson, for goodness sake, measure him!