Old Cambrian Society (UK Branch) - 2010 Annual Dinner at the RAF Club, Piccadilly, London

Old Cambrian Society

Old Cambrian Society (UK Branch) - 2010 Annual Dinner at the RAF Club, Piccadilly, London

Photogallery

Old Cambrian Society (UK Branch)
2010 Annual Dinner
Held on Friday, 16th April at the RAF Club, Piccadilly, London.

Below are some **photos** of the evening - **click on them** to enlarge

Table 1	Table 2	Table 3	Table 4

Table 5	Table 6	Table 7	Table 8

Harris & Pringle	Purves & Clayton	Birch, Wood & Raja	Lenton, Gatti & Carpenter

Tooleys & Kitley	Jenkins, Smith, Sparkes & Allen	McCulloch & Gilboy	Pre-Dinner

During Dinner	Murdoch	Murdoch & Wood	May & Aikin

Elliott & Purdy	Gilboy & McCulloch	Tyekiff & Simpson	Hailstone, Eastwood & Collier

Table 8 chatting	Skiba, Collier & Keer-Keer	Lecchini & Sparkes	Dokelman & Tooley

Table 7 chatting

The 2010 Annual Dinner of the Old Cambrian Society (UK Branch) was probably 'one of the best' for a very long time - the view of many of the 'regulars'!!

Once again held in London at the Royal Air Force Club in Piccadilly, just the day before the event the whole of Europe's airspace became a no-fly zone due to the effects of the volcanic ash cloud following the eruption of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull. This prevented six people attending the dinner - two were stranded in Amsterdam (on their way to the dinner from Sydney, Australia!!), two were stuck in Geneva, one in Athens, and a further Old Cambrian couldn't make it down from Edinburgh. However, some from as far away as Western Australia, New Zealand and Canada made it to the main event in the Old Cambrian Society calendar.

Despite the disappointment felt by these six unfortunate victims of the travel chaos, 73 “old boys” and guests enjoyed a fabulous evening hosted by RAF Club member Alan Murdoch (Rhodes 1945-50). The Secretary, Steve Le Feuvre (Clive 1970-5), acted as Master of Ceremonies for the evening, and as usual kept announcements and speeches to an absolute minimum. Conscious that the decline in numbers over the past couple of years was probably due in part to the effects of the worldwide economic downturn, nonetheless Steve had some suggestions to put to those present on how to possibly revive interest. These included possibly changing the event to a lunchtime on either a Friday or Saturday, but a straw poll taken on the night gave a resounding message that the vast majority wanted to retain the event as a Friday evening dinner.

There was a re-vamped slide show running all evening of over 350 old school photos, photos of the school in recent times, and also a few wildlife photos taken by Steve & Suzanne Le Feuvre during their safari in the Masai Mara in June 2009. Throughout the evening people caught side of themselves or old school pals in photos taken 30, 40 and 50 years ago, and this often led to much hilarity around the tables.

Towards the end of the evening, Alan Murdoch thanked Steve Le Feuvre for all his work for the Old Cambrian Society, and outlined the great impact that the OCS web site has had worldwide since Steve created it in November 2002. The web site is probably the best school web site around, and now contains over 1,200 Alumni registrations with in excess of 2,500 photos dating back from the early 1900's to the present day. With average page hits of 8,245 per day for 2009 (slightly over 3 million for the year), the web site is now the source of much enjoyment for Old Cambrians, and has also facilitated the re-uniting of hundreds of people who have lost touch over the years.

For any who attended the dinner, please do send scans of your photos to the Webmaster, so that they can be added to this page.