Kidbrooke Great Get Together 2010
Report written by Chris Warrell for our September 2010 Newsletter
Sunday 13 June 2010
Samuel Montagu Youth Centre
Kidbrooke
Following on from last year’s successful Great Get Togethers, organised by Greenwich Council, we were invited to come back again this year to fly the flag for the Meccano hobby and SELMEC at more of the popular events — laid on free for the public.
The General Election meant that the organisers were not able to give us much forewarning of the details, or even whether we would be able to participate in all the events. As it turned out we did have a stand at all three Great Get Togethers. Hopefully, we’ll be invited back next year.
Each Great Get Together has various community groups attending, the council’s departments have a presence, and free drinks were available from the council in the Talk Café where you can ask your councillors questions or, at least, send them a question. There was also a main stage with music of various types and an arena for big demonstrations.
The first of the Great Get Togethers took place at the Samuel Montague Centre and playing fields in Kidbrooke on Sunday 13th June. There was some confusion about which entrance to use, most of us being redirected to an entrance in a side street. We were located at one end of a large rectangular marquee and seven tables were already laid out for us. We soon discovered that the four-gang socket provided was dead despite the sparks’ claim that they’d tested it all the night before. Several attempts later, and much shrugging and puzzled looks from them, and they decided to run the socket from a different source which provided uninterrupted power all day.
A boy tests out Chris’s tram
There were six members present: Peter Clay had two Meccanographs; Brian Elvidge had a fairground ride, gas engine and robots amongst others; Brain Leach gave his fruit machine another outing; Chris Warrell showed his tramcar, blue/gold ships and drum kit; Doug Windibank brought a suitcase full of small models to fill a whole table while Tim Surtell brought his laptop so that visitors could look at the website. He also brought a new club banner which was attached to the valance of the marquee.
Part of our stand, with models from Brian Elvidge and Brian Leach
By early afternoon things were getting pretty busy with plenty of visitors and all of our flyers were handed out. Earlier we’d had a number of stall holders involved with various children’s groups come over and they seemed interested in turning up to our Show in October. Whether they bring all their little ones remains to be seen.
See also our reports on this year’s Charlton and Woolwich Great Get Togethers.