Monday 3rd July
The sun came out in Cardiff yesterday and I was sat in front of a computer writing to you - it’s a hard life … Things are coming together for our weekend in September, we’ve arranged a buffet lunch on the Saturday at the Richmond Hotel, and an evening meal at Med Delight on North Parade - you can look here for the menu etc - http://meddelight.com/.
There are still four members of staff - Harold Carter, Roy Lewis, John Aitchison and Tony Moyes - living in, or near, Aberystwyth and Richard has suggested we invite them to join us for the buffet lunch. They may of course decline - Harold must be well into his eighties - but it would be nice if they could join us. That would add a little to the cost of c.£15, so £20 for lunch would cover it.
We do however need to have some idea of committed numbers though as Richard has volunteered to co-ordinate things in Aberystwyth for us.
I therefore need a firm reply asap from you all answering the following questions:
1) I will be coming and “I’m bringing … with me"/ “will be on my own”
2) I/We would like to come to the lunch buffet on Saturday
3) I/We would like to come to the evening meal on Saturday
Answers to these questions are far more important than what follows.
It’s only a couple of months away until we get to the 1st September. I’ve decided that I’ll be going up to Aberystwyth on the Thursday (in our camper van) to get my bearings, and perhaps do a scout for a pub meander (not crawl) on Friday evening. Again … it’s a hard life …
Now we get to the interesting bits. John is very keen that he minimises the shock to his system. He thinks it would be a great idea (for him at least) - and perhaps you might even agree with him - for us to write something down about what we’ve been up to in the last 50 years. Dennis has already done that (to me) and upon request from some of you, Rick has also done this as he and Laura won’t be able to be with us. Of course I know bits and pieces from Christmas cards, seeing folk etc. but “the little grey cells are letting me down increasingly” so I don’t trust myself to broadcast what I know.
I thought about setting up a Facebook Group, but I really don’t like Facebook, it’s so easy to make a slip and all of a sudden stuff gets “out in the wild”, I then thought about setting up a Google+ Community and I, unfortunately, sent out instructions yesterday about how to join that - I wish I hadn't. Even I found it a challenge, and this morning I woke up (having had some feedback, I must add) and tried to think of another alternative.
I thought about flickr, but that again might have been "challenging" for some, so I eventually decided on this, a private blog. I'll copy emails from people into it - not a difficult task, or you can email directly into it, I'll tell you how to do that in another post. It makes things easier for you and means you only have to use two tools - email and a web browser - ones you're using already.
I'll stick with using Google Photos and the Aber 2017 Album already set up, where I’ve added a few photos I have, or have picked-up in the last couple of months, which should get you “in the mood” so to speak. You should also be able to add photos that you have to this album. You can get to it from this link - https://goo.gl/photos/1yJ4V8CswyA6JriH7 - again if you’re not into this sort of thing, but have photos you’d like to share, just email them to me and I'll add them.