Christmas Special, 15th December
More than 40 members and visitors gathered in the Civic Hall Council Chamber for the Christmas Special this year. After a brief introduction from the President, Tony Redford started on his programme of digitally projected AV sequences. Members enjoyed a two part set of sequences covering a recent trip made by Tony and Dorothy accompanied by Brian and Valerie Bower to the south western USA. We saw landscape, natural history and reportage images, many using the power of the software to scan across a scene and all exactly in time with the accompanying music tracks. They were followed by “Trains”, a sequence starting at a model railway exhibition then progressing through real steam train scenes to scrap-yard images. The mood of the presentation then changed with a sequence of images taken on club outings. Early ones were “doctored” by Tony by the addition of supposed speech in “balloons”, mostly greeted by hilarity from the audience. Later in the sequence Tony had added “Santa Claus” type white beards to club members, succeeding in making them appear funny rather than disguised and provoking even louder laughter. The climax of the evening was Tony’s renowned and very aptly named “X-Certificate Christmas Cards” sequence. The earthy humour evidently appealed to the majority of those present with laughter so loud that it was fortunate that NCPS were the sole users of the building that evening.
A brief but sincere vote of thanks from the President and announcements about the first meeting of the New Year (and handing-in for our Annual Exhibition) closed the formal part of the evening. The chairs were then quickly packed away and all present tucked in to the extensive spread of eats and drinks with a Christmas party flavour that had been provided by members, making a suitable end to the first half of the society’s session.