Monday 3rd November: An Officers meeting at The Wheatsheaf in Oakham, where we have the back room to ourselves, thanks to MC and Dan, the landlord.

A good meeting with all ten Officers present, Mike Crosland joining us following Robin's resignation. We make a good fist of updating our event calendar, and I just about manage to keep the meeting on track. Two keys topics that take a fair amount of time are the rearranged Food Collection this year, following Tesco's decision to move our dates, and then the 40th Charter Dinner.

I hope we have offered Mike Saywood an alternative to his very conservative vision for the evening of just 70 people. If that's all we can manage, then Victoria Hall is the wrong venue. I think we might just have persuaded him to think about a bigger model, 150 people at £30/head, gives a budget of £4,500, and if a good meal can be delivered for £20/head, it leaves well over £1,000 for entertainment.

Mike Cropper has even gone as far as committing £200 to any loss that we might incur should we not get the numbers we will aim for.