It was encouraging throughout January to see a good steady resumption of our different bridge activities with minimal disruption from the Club refurbishment programme. As I write, we are all now considering our third chair alternative, (if we include sticking with our present ones), and it will be interesting to see how the selection finally turns out. Personally, I am happy with any of the alternatives on offer and pleased that we have been well consulted and have a number of good options to choose from. Chair support and comfort is an important issue for many of our Members. Hopefully the final selection will work for everyone.
The match programmes are now resuming with away fixtures frontloaded as planned (for obvious reasons). The away fixture against AELTC is always very popular although trips to the MCC and RMS (Ladies’ Golf League) are also attractive options.
The Club pairs competition – the Founders Trophy is taking place over two sessions on Monday 10th and 17th February instead of the usual Duplicate Bridge sessions. To be eligible to win, pairs need to be both Club Members and play in both sessions. Winners of the competition will be entitled to represent Roehampton Club in the Surrey EBU Mary Edwards Competition which is due to be held on 11th May at Wimbledon Bridge Club.
The Club Refurbishment seems to be proceeding well with no disruption to our bridge programme, apart from the occasional banging noises during the daytime sessions. We expect to play in the Bridge Room through to mid or late March, after which bridge will switch to the Fountain Room (or similar) while the Bridge Room is refurbished.
On Tuesday 21st January the Bridge Room hosted the Lady Golf Captain’s Charity event. Congratulations to the organisers and supporters for raising an excellent £1,298 for FiSH and for introducing some new people to supporting their work. It was also nice to invite guests to our Bridge Room in support of a worthy cause. Well done Claire!
We were slightly unlucky in our first round of the Devonshire Cup with only one team going through to the next round. One of our losing teams appears to have been on the wrong end of some dubious TD decisions. It does however give us good chances in both the Cup and the Plate events.
On a personal note, it was nice to be in the winning team for the Wimbledon Bridge Club team’s competition – the Boschler Cup. Diane did a great job in holding her end up, as well as modelling her designer knitwear. Jim Boschler was a character who many of us will have enjoyed playing against.
Malcolm Bricknell, Bridge Chair
