Newsletter May, 2017

A special welcome to all new members from the club and a welcome back to all renewing members. We now have 182 members in the Club, a de-crease of 5 from last year so we must really encourage new members and beginner players.

Club GNOT Playoff on SATURDAY 22th JULY 2017.

This is club members’ opportunity to experience a teams event in a non-threatening, fun atmos-phere and to perhaps to earn Gold Masterpoints. Why not organise a team and nominate on the forms provided on the noticeboard. Play will be from 12.30 pm to 5 pm and the entry fee is $80.00 per team. Please enter and pay for your team by the closing date which is the end of competition on 12th July 2017.

The club will pay 100% of the winning team’s entrance fee in the Regional Final, 50% of the second team’s entrance fee and 25% of the third team’s entrance fee.

Why not help make this event happen this year? Enter now!

Congratulations

Terry and John Pearson participated in the Gawler Club Challenge in March this year and were the top pair. Well done!

Illnesses and Bereavements

The club has always had a tradition of sending appropriate cards to members whose health prevents them from playing for some while or who have suffered recent spousal bereavements. However, we can only do this if we are made aware of particular instances. It is up to members, in particular play-ing partners of affected members, to let the secretary or another committee person know so we can respond accordingly and in good time.If you know of any club member to whom this may apply, can you please inform a committee member, in particular, Judith Blackstone.

If you are feeling under the weather, coming down with a cold, please don’t share your germs with other club members. Please stay home and recover quickly.

Incident/Accident Report Forms

We now have these forms available for you if you have an accident at the club or something happens that you feel that you want/need to report. These forms are available from your di-rector.

The Correct Use of Bidding Boxes

The following are the rules that should be followed when using bidding boxes:Players must determine their call before they touch any bidding card. If a card is inadvertently han-dled the Director must be called to check that no unauthorised information has been given. This is similar to the situation where a player commences to write a bid on a pad and changes their mind and crosses it out and puts something else on the pad.Bidding cards should remain on the table until after the opening lead has been played.The final contract should be placed on the board being played facing the declarer. All other cards should be put back in the bidding box.When putting cards back in the bidding box please ensure that cards are put back in the correct box and that they are in the correct order. This especially applies to ALERT cards as we often find several cards in one box and none in another.

Advanced notice for the next round of Beginner’s lessons.

These beginners classes will start in July and run for 8 weeks. Please advertise these classes amongst your family and friends as we need to recruit new members.

We also have a special Friday group aimed at those players who would rather play in a semi supervised environment rather than in the fully competitive group. If you know of anyone who would like to play in a group such as this please let them know about it.

Acting Secretary

As Helen Wetherall is away for 2 months, June Hammond will be acting Secre-tary, so if you have any questions, concerns or complaints, June will do her best to help you.

Five Cent Tin The 5c tin was recently emptied.  It contained $149.30 in 5 cent coins with the West Beach Community Bank ( a Bendigo Bank) matching this amount for a total of $298.60. Since the 5c campaign was launched by the bank in late 2015, a total of $1204.50 has been raised. Thank you to all members who save these small coins to give to the Club and to the West Beach Bank for matching the donation. Gillian Gordon

Christmas Lunch 2017 This year Christmas Lunch will be on Monday 11th December. We would like to have the lunch on different days of the week in future to accommodate more

members. If you have any comments or concerns, please speak to a committee member.

Glenelg Congress Raffle Baskets

The raffle is always an onerous job for just a couple of people and always raises a lot of money for our club. So rather than leaving this job to 2 people, we would like each session of the week to provide a basket that we can raffle on Congress day. Your committee member or delegate will talk with you and give you more information. It means we would have 6 lovely baskets to raffle. If you have con-tacts in the business world who might be willing to donate to your basket that would be great.

Morning and Afternoon Tea Clean up

Please don’t leave this job for Directors/Supervisors to do - they are busy enough. Please make sure there is enough water in the urn for the afternoon session and that things are cleaned and cleared away at the end of the day.

Gluten Free Biscuits

There are gluten free biscuits in the cupboard for those who are gluten intolerant.Please help yourself.

Book Review- Peter Teubner

Recently a very good friend of mine suggested that I might be interested in an author called Martin Walker and his books that feature a policeman called Bruno. Amazon told me that there are 9 in the set with the tenth to come later in the year. Given that it would take at least three weeks to buy a book from Amazon I chose to try a novel concept for me called “library”.I have read 4 of the books in 10 days. They are terrific. The first in the series is called Bruno, Chief of Police. It introduces Bruno who is the only policeman in a small French town called St Denis that is in the Dordogne. Twenty-eight years ago another friend took my wife and I touring through this region of South West France and that started my long love affair with provincial France. You don’t have to know anything about France to enjoy the books but if you like good writ-ing, wine, food and mystery you will find them difficult to put down. The second and third books are called Dark Vineyard and Black Diamond. I started with Dark Vineyard but any of these three are OK to start.While I was in the library ordering my next Bruno book, I noticed another book that I have been meaning to recommend, namely “The Dry” by Jane Harper. The reason for my delay is that it takes forever for your turn to come up if you order it from the library. At least that was the case in January and it is still hard to get. I can understand its popularity because it is now acknowledged as the book of the year for 2016. It is Ms Harper’s first novel and Betty tells me that she is a journal-ist for the Geelong Advertiser. Not for long apparently if The New York Times de-scribes it as a “breathless page turner.“ Even though President Trump does not trust the Times it seems that the book world does. The Dry is the best book that I have read this year. The good news is that the paperback has been released and there are plenty of them around.

Next time I will discuss Stephen Saylor and his Sub Rosa series that features Gor-dianus the finder, a private investigator who works in Rome at the end of the Re-public, that is BCE.