We have quite the update for you this time! The first thing is that The Priory Club has been renamed to St Mary’s Community Centre …. Named after the church next door and who have now taken over the running of the building.
The second update we have is that we are back and can meet face to face…. With a slight change, our nights have moved from a Wednesday to a Tuesday… Due to a mix up at a few levels (not from us) we were missed off a list and had our nights “given” to a choir… this is not something that we had any control over nor could we have done any more in keeping in touch with the changes going on. The new committee said they didn’t know we were club users so they rang round other people prior to announcing
that the club was opening again, and gave our nights away. The new management team have been very apologetic about the mistake.
Not only have our nights gone but the room hire charges have gone up. This means we have to add a small amount to admission prices. We have held the cost down for well over a decade and have been charging a fraction of the price other clubs charge for admission so given the increase in costs we are being charged we have no option but
to increase door prices. Coffee and Tea will remain at 20p though, we have control over that 😊
For the moment we are only holding a meeting on the third Tuesday of each month until we get settled in. Then in the new year we will ask if people want a second ‘practice night’ earlier in the month like we have now.
Our dates till the end of the year are: 3rd Tuesdays of the month 8pm – 11pm
21st September 2021 (Our opening night! Hope you can make it.)
This will be a great chance to catch up with everyone after 18 months!
This will be an informal night like a practice night, bring your accordions for a bit of music, bring yourself for a chat and catch up with what has been happening with others over the last 18 months since you last saw them, and bring along anything you want to sell.
I will be asking around on the night what people want from the club re practice night, concert night, guest artist performances etc. Its your chance to shape how we run in future.
Our other nights up to the end of the year…
19th October 2021
16th November 2021
21st December 2021
You’ll notice that we are only having one meeting a month at the moment… we feel that this will be a good way to start back up again, and will encourage more to attend on one night instead of spreading out over the month, it will also keep the cost down for us all. We will vary the nights in their formats…. We may do guest artist nights at other nights of the year depending on who we can book, or who is passing us on the motorway etc.
You may see some changes as we begin to find our feet again and we hope that you will come out and support us again. However if you feel ill then please give the club a miss on that night, I am sure most people have had their injections and are quite sensible but we don’t want to chance spreading anything around at our meetings.
There will be hand sanitiser dispensers at the entrance of the room and near the tea and coffee. we would encourage they get used to keep us all safe and keep the club open! The timings of the night are strict so we must be out of the room at 11pm, whereas before Leslie would be fairly lenient because she normally left by 11.30. Things like tea and coffee cups will begin packing away and washed up at 10:30pm to make sure we keep to our 11pm chucking out
time.
They have done some renovations to the rooms and kitchen see picture below….. we went to the opening where the priest of St Mary’s blessed the building, some cake and tea was also consumed.
We are contacting people to let everyone know we are back meeting again… do feel free to tell anyone and everyone that we are open, our new dates, and encourage them to come down to the meetings! Maybe not everyone gets to read the newsletter in time.
We’re looking forward to seeing you all!
