PRATS Memories of The 1997-1998 Season
The President address (Well he only wears it in private!)
And what sort of a year was it? Well, it was a very eventful year with lots of events.
Who can forget that splendid Christmas Bar-B-Q in the summer, the Christmas tree adorned with fairy lights, the greetings cards strung up over the mantle and presents for all the little Prats from Santa. Croquet on the lawn, or under the Volvo in Two Bounce's case, sizzling bar-b-q all afternoon and the day rounded off by singing carols long into the night. Great memories, especially for the neighbour across the road who rang up to say how much he was enjoying it but couldn't we do it somewhere else, Tibet was favourite as I recall.
The croquet theme then continued with an excellent afternoon's sport and picnic on the manicured lawns of Putteridge Bury. That's more the sort of thing that matches our exclusive country club image don't you think? And, by the way, let's get this straight right now. When the General build's the new clubhouse on his croquet lawn, we don't want any of this mamby pamby lady members demanding equal rights of access etc. etc. Oh no, boys will be boys. Bah, humbug. Some dashed fancy fillies among 'em on the other hand. Might think again, what?
And so to the biggest shambles of the year. The annual end of year prize giving dinner which turned out to be neither at the end of the year nor a prize giving dinner. The whole debacle got hijacked by some young upstart to celebrate his birthday. Can you believe it? A perfectly good night out, the social event of our calendar, ruined. All the careful planning, the trophies almost getting engraved, the hours spent on writing unexpected acceptance speeches, the nightmare of trying to keep the league scores, all a complete waste of time. And all for one man. Name the guilty party ! No, even the Prats wouldn't do that, would we Two Bounce ? Right, that's enough of memory lane. Let's all get down to enjoying the pictorial memories:
The PRATS Christmas BBQ 1998 |
|
|
|
Who can forget? & what unusually temperate weather for the time of year! |
 |
|
The End of Year Dinner |
|
| The dinner started well enough with
everyone enjoying themselves! Even the speeches started okay! And
then disaster
The whole event was hijacked by some old codger - apparently it was his 100th birthday or something and a surprise party had been organised - well it was a surprise to us PRATS anyway! We were left with little choice but to play along. |
|
| Still the fact that Queen remembered to send a telegram seemed to surprise even him! |
|
| The season has produced a worrying spate of PRATS problems, those featured below are just a few. See Auntie Molly for more! | |
| Finding mouth with bottle of beer - fortunately affecting very few PRATS & virtually none of the PRATesses, who demonstrate excellent methods of avoiding this problem |
|
|
|
|
|
The image problem! |
|
|
|
And the weight problem - unfortunately affecting more & more PRATS, although this is an exceptional example! |
Not all this year's PRATS enterprises were successful |
|
| Tragically the well known & appreciated PRAT taxi service, the "PRATMOBILE" failed due to lack of driver. Apparently Friday nights have other attractions! (now that Tesco's internet ordering & delivery service has started rumour has that Well Oiled is coming out of retirement) |
|
|
|
The success of the year (from the
PRATesses point of view) was the new PRAT "find, recover &
delivery" service. Run along the traditional dogcatcher lines.
PRATS are now having to expend far too much effort avoiding early curtailment of Friday night activities.
|
 |
 |