Our annual social event, with guests The Rum Old Boys, was on 27 November. More people came than to any of our meetings ever before (so far as I can remember – I’m happy to be corrected!) and included relatives of the late Steve Wright, our former Show Secretary; they brought photos of an orchid-themed grave marker created in his memory. The Rum Old Boys transported us back to another age with their a capella renditions of sea shanties including ‘Rio Grande’ and ‘Drunken Sailor’; traditional folk songs including ‘Molly Malone’ and ‘The Wild Rover; and more modern titles ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘Sloop John B’ (the last being a much older song that the Beach Boys reworked for their classic album ‘Pet Sounds’). They encouraged us to join in the choruses with the help of song sheets, and finished up with ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas’. The whole performance was in support of a very worthy charity, the East Anglian Air Ambulance, for which they held a collection. A shared buffet followed their performance and the meeting ended much later than usual – a testament to its success.
Re the BOC Photo Competition: Bill only received 10 photos in total from 2 people, so no vote to select which were to go forward to the competition was needed. Carol will notify members via email when the competition voting opens.
We set up our display tables as usual. Chris Mittell won the Novices table by default with his Vanda New Blue, and Andy Gissing won the Winners table with his Gastrochilus acutifolius x obliquus.
