A message below from Hon. Life Vice President – Graham Elcock

Hi Members. I am hoping most of you by now have enjoyed the video (see below), arranged by Kees and Olga, of the Cabaret which formed part of the entertainment at the Wallet Ball hosted by our Club in early March. For the uninformed the Wallet Ball is a long standing event hosted annually by the six local Clubs in turn. It is traditional in many ways, one of which is the production of a Cabaret performed by members of the host club. Hope you are still with me. Our Commodore was the MC for the evening as I had stepped down after many years and I have to say ‘the boy did good’.

The entertainment began with the whole cast on stage singing what seems to have become our Club Song. We introduced it first six years ago to the tune of a song ‘Tonight’ from West Side Story with our own words added. As a farewell gesture I was allowed to join the cast for the opening number. Thank you Cast. As I will use first names only and there are two Chris’s involved, (Peet & Sweeny), to avoid confusion I will refer to the one as Todd.

Following on from the opening number we had Kim and Todd enjoying a beer and a chat where every sentence was interrupted by a report from the Shipping Forecast. That was cleverly done. Listen in on the video. Carol was up next ready to sing California Dreams. The mistake she made was employing a Backing Group made up of Derek, Chris, Todd and Phillipa. Singing beautifully Carol tried three times only to be distracted by the ‘fabulous four’ trying to imitate the noise of a saw mill. That of course was how it was supposed to be but I would have preferred the goons to go off and Carol to have stayed on and sung to us. Next up we were honoured with a visit from Shirley Bassey (aka Wendy) where to the sounds of Love you Hate you Wendy divested a seated but aloof from it all Kees, of most of his outer garments, straight-faced is our Kees.

Kim with his trusty Guitar sang one of his haunting melodies where the hero turned out to be an OOD who was a pratt. Nice one Kim. You have heard of three men in a boat. Read five: all at sea in a lifeboat, no sign of land as Kim kept reminding us, and lusting for food. Who was the tastiest from Kim, Todd, Chris, John and Kees to be eaten first. Todd of course was used to this sort of thing. The ending was bloodless so no one lost an arm but we were well entertained.

While the benefits of our little Club were being discussed by John and Chris, Phillipa was suddenly struck dumb, but did perform for us what I can only describe as descriptive body movements. She seemed to attack John a couple of times but by that time I think she was past caring.

I doubt many of you would remember the time when a dance evening would end with the Last Waltz. That was when you could ask your Dance Partner if you could walk her home. How things have changed. The last dance of our evening was carried out by Danny, Anabel, Lucy, Rosy and Charlotte. I have to admit they performed wonderfully. Different to my younger days but it was good to see youngsters at such a function. My thanks to all participants for keeping the flag flying and to the behind the scene helpers without whom we could not function …

All in all the evening was a great success. Apart from the enjoyment of it all approximately £900 was raised for the Ellen McArthur Trust. Truly amazing.