Fast Forward - Final Lap

Many of you have known, and some may have seen the small mention in last month’s Acorn, that I will be standing down as Chairman and from the committee as from the end of December. Although officially I am still Chairman until the AGM, for practical reasons it makes more sense to hand over the reigns to Colin Rodger at the start of our club year. I would like to thank everyone who has helped and supported the club and myself over the years, and hope that you continue to support any future committee. I hope that I have made a suitable impression on Sevenoaks and District, and motorsport in general. I will still be around, although I do not expect to be competing in 2002 and I expect to see many of you around through the year.
My extended thanks though to Gordon Franks for taking on the Marketing Machine series, and for stepping in to look after speed matters in general. He reckons that this is only a short-term solution. (Mug, that’s what I said Gordon!)
Coming to the end of the year and during the run up to Christmas, I did not expect to receive the sad news that we did, with the death of two of our members.
Jack Kemsley was perhaps not un-expected, and was a long time Sevenoaks President and great rally fan. I met him on a few occasions and he always had a great story about rallying and in particular the RAC of which he was a major influence on its organisation in the past, when it was considered the toughest event in the world, unlike the TV carparkfest it has now become. I would have been interested to know what he thought of today’s type of event. He was also good enough to recognise Sevenoaks DMC and left the club a small amount of money with which we propose to dedicate a trophy to his name. Thank you, Jack.
The same cannot be said for the second member. I did not know Martin Williams, and to have your life cut short in an RTA accident caused by whatever the reason is not very pleasant. My thoughts go out to his family and friends, and even more so at this time of the year.
On a lighter note, we again entered the MSA Club of the Year, for which we have been nominated for the last 2 years as best club in the ASEMC region. Well we didn’t win again this year and I’ve no idea how we fared in the region either.  Disappointingly, it seems that only about 40 clubs of the many hundreds, bothered to enter, so I’m not really sure if it’s even worth winning. One particular question in the competition was what you would do with the £1000 prize money if you won it. My reply was that I would put it on the bar at The Bell and buy every member a drink for making this such a good club. In this politically correct world I suspect that this did not give us any extra votes, but what the hell, at least I was being honest!!

Steve Medhurst

The Acorn : January Edition