Secretary Mike reports that starting in 1985 the Round Table’s Sleigh has toured the streets of Scarborough and surrounding districts for 10 nights every December except when this was not possible because of the nationwide lockdowns in the time of Covid.

The sleigh has for many years been used to collect Santa from the harbour and deliver him to Boyes Store in Queen Street and to take him to visit the primary school in Barrowcliff to give out presents to the school children donated by the school authorities.

The sleigh has been rebuilt and continually maintained initially by members of Round Table and more recently by members of 41 Club who also paid for the last rebuild 5 years ago.

Sadly this year due primarily to the dwindling number of members in Round Table it was decided to operate for 5 nights only but still collect Santa from the harbour and visit Barrowcliffe school. Despite the reduction in the number of nights the sleigh was operational even in these high cost of living times Santa’s Elves still managed to collect £2,151. A record result!

Thanks to those members of 41 Club who gave up their evenings to enable the sleigh to operate and as a result had the chance to witness the happy smiling faces on the hundreds of children who came out to see Santa many of whom handed him their Christmas list of presents they hoped to receive.

Like all successful events the sleigh requires a lot of hard work behind the scenes the majority of which has been done for the past 25 years by our own Ben Kitto (or Rudolf as he is known to Santa).

Merry Christmas
Santa

At about 11.30pm on Friday 5 December all the sleepless nights spent worrying about food allergies, the meetings, the WhatsApp messages, the emails and the last minute telephone calls had paid off and our Membership Officer Simon was finally able to relax and savour the success of the 41 Club Charity Night organised by him and his Charity Night Committee at Scarborough Rugby Club.

Although the evening was wet and very windy over 100 members and guests attended the event and were welcomed by a grand display of Christmas lights courtesy of the Rugby Club and 2 doormen pretending to be tough to prevent gate crashers.

After some pre-dinner drinks the evening proper started with a health and safety announcement from Simon ably assisted by 2 members of his “cabin crew” to point out the emergency exits and several jokes which were met with groans of anguish not laughter.

With Vice Chairman Richard acting as compere for the evening after a brief welcome from Chairman Dom he then introduced representatives from his 2 nominated charities for the year Scarborough Talking News and SPARKS to describe the services offered by their respective charities. In a very family affair Dom’s mother Mary spoke on behalf of Scarborough Talking News and his wife Nicky on behalf of SPARKS both of whom received a warm round of applause for their efforts.

At last the food was served. Rumour has it that it was the same menu as last year but whatever there were no grounds to criticise the offering save towards the end when the kitchen ran out of cheesecake for the dessert course.

While dessert was served entertainment was provided by Annie & King described on their Facebook page as “a crossover folk country upbeat” duo from Scarborough who stuck to their task well despite the distractions of guests eating their desserts and after dinner conversation.

With the audience well sated with both food and drink the delicate operation of prizing money out of wallets and handbags for the benefit of the 2 charities commenced. In an innovation the raffle ticket sellers had the use of a Sum Up machine to catch those who claimed to have no cash on them! Steve Slade did the honours of managing the raffle draw which did seem to favour some tables over others! It was also suspicious that many of the winners were 41 Club members but hey your correspondent is not bitter at having failed to win anything despite an enormous outlay!

Then it was on to the auction with Richard acting as auctioneer. Clearly a man who missed out on his preferred vocation in life and one who has watched too many American court room dramas or just likes making a noise with a gavel. Nonetheless he did a sterling job of extracting a large amount of money from his audience despite some very shady lots on offer including naked clay pigeon shooting and having a hair cut while eating a box of chocolates.

The evening ended with a disco from Magic Mike which allowed some of the guests to show their moves on the dance floor.

Although the final figures have still to be calculated the amount raised for the 2 charities is believed to be in the region of a very impressive £2,700.

Congratulations to Simon and his team for a highly successful Charity Night and thanks to all those who donated prizes for the raffle and auction whose generosity is much appreciated.

41 Club Charity Correspondent

In a reprise of a Trafalgar Night meeting held a few years ago our Catering Officer John organised this month’s meeting to celebrate the stunning victory of the Royal Navy (27 ships of the line) commanded by Lord Horatio Nelson over the combined might of the French and Spanish navies (33 ships of the line) without the loss of a single ship on 21 October 1805.

The meeting was held appropriately enough at the Scarborough Yacht Club on the 17 October with a traditional roast beef dinner followed by spotted dick and custard. What better way than such a meal to celebrate Trafalgar Night. Although it was a shame that the promised port did not materialise due to a lack of time!

In the absence of our Chairman the meeting was well chaired by Vice Chairman Richard who in the absence of Dom was observed enjoying double helpings of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

With a guest speaker business was conducted before the meal and started with the Vice Chairman welcoming 3 guests to the meeting. Secretary Mike thanked the Yacht Club for hosting the meeting and made a plea to those members with standing apologies to inform the Catering Officer if they were going to attend and not simply turn up which made estimating numbers extremely difficult.

In an attempt to address the problem of diminished donations to the Charity Box the Club has acquired an electronic card playing device to accompany the charity box to enable members to make a donation either in cash or by card. The new technology was explained to members by David Henderson and appeared to be an outstanding success with over £100 donated by card and cash during the course of the evening.

The guest speaker for the evening and former 88 member Nick Taylor introduced himself and invited members to make donations to the RNLI before giving a knowledgeable and fascinating account of the Battle of Trafalgar complete with images of maps, ships of the line and the weaponry used. At the end of his talk Nick was able to answer several questions which reflected well on his own knowledge of the subject and of the members asking the questions.

All in all an enjoyable and informative evening.

The meeting was closed by Secretary Mike at the unusually late time of 10.30pm with the usual toast to RTBI.

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