I can’t believe that four weeks have gone by without me writing the report about the planning meeting. I can’t help feeling that if I worked for the Times I would be in big trouble now. Better late than never some would say so here goes. I think that in previous years I have said almost all there is to say about the Duke’s Head, Somerleyton. It is a nice friendly pub with a good range of food and drink. It also has a fairly large separate dining area which once was the children’s
room. For more reasons than one this makes it an ideal spot for our yearly
planning session as it is easy to get everyone together and talk about the
year just gone and the year ahead without disturbing the whole pub. However
I am getting ahead of myself.
We arrived, before midday, to find that there were a couple of Morgans already
in the car park but no one in sight. However, by the time we had parked,
extracted ourselves from the car and put the tonneau on Sandra and Philip
Middleton had appeared. They reported that the Duke’s Head was not
actually open until midday and that they had got here a little early in the
hope of some coffee only to be sadly disappointed. By the time we had had
a chat with Phillip and Sandra others began to arrive 
thick and fast. We
were, therefore, a sizeable group that entered the bar all at once. On the
way in I was accosted by a man who just parked his BMW asking if we were
here every weekend. He had been at the pub almost exactly a year before to
find a stack of Morgans in the car park. I was forced to admit that we did
not frequent the Duke’s
Head every weekend just once a year. This delayed me a little so I was at
the back of the queue for drinks. No matter, the beer was worth the wait.
Sadly despite its size the back room could not accommodate us all for the
meal so some brave souls ate in the main pub. The food was as normal very
good although some of us were just starting on our main course while others
were tucking into their pudding. However, we were all, eventually, fed and
watered so that the main purpose of the meeting could commence. The minutes
are reproduced here so a full description is not needed here. I would like
to add a personal note of thanks to Maurice and Eileen for their friendship
when we were new members and for their unstinting hard work in looking after
FolkMog so well. We have Maurice for one more year as centre secretary and
then for many more years as an active member.
The meeting broke up at about four I think. I remember thinking that we
would need our lights on soon. This was a fun meeting and actually decided
a lot about how FolkMog would be organised in the future. Therefore, it was
a momentous meeting which in a typical FolkMog way went off without any great
fuss.
I was a little delayed leaving the Dukes Head as I thought it polite to pay the bill before leaving so I did not see who it was gave us a huge bag of walnuts that had been grown in their place in France but a huge thanks to whoever it was – they are yummy.