© Companions of the Longbow

All of this week’s news comes courtesy of Jenni with a few extra comments by Mark in square brackets ...

Companions of the Longbow Banquet

A quick correction to information published last week: it will in fact be STEVE Stretton (not Mark) who will be the guest speaker at this year’s banquet at The Trout, Lechlade on Saturday 25th April [I’ll have to remember to always proof read my work before posting it up in futur—Mark].

Tickets are now on sale and there is a capacity limit so don’t wait too long to buy yours ... Partners/family/friends are welcome. Tickets are available from Bob Bannister or Jenni Gerrard at a cost of £32 each, with each ticket having one complimentary raffle ticket with it. Of course, we will be flogging additional raffle tickets as usual on the night! If anyone has anything that they would like to put into the raffle, we will be very grateful for all prize donations, big or small.

Companions Newsletter

Finally the committee has managed to get another newsletter together so you can expect to see the latest edition winging its way to your email very soon if not already there! Please particularly look out for the form to express your likely attendance (or not) at the various events that are coming up – it will be very helpful if as many people as possible can return this information to us so we can get an idea of likely numbers for each event. If you know of anyone who would like a hard copy of the whole newsletter or just the attendance form please let us know. [Having just this minute read the newsletter it’s a good one so a congratulations to Jane for producing it!—Mark]

Companions Clothing

An order is just about to be placed with a new supplier for samples of the next set of Companions clothing. When the samples have been received, they will be modelled and photographed so that you can all see what is on offer and decide what you might like to order. The planned range will include printed t-shirts, embroidered polo-neck t-shirts, both normal & windproof fleeces, beanie hats & baseball caps. Watch out for the photos and more info coming soon ...

Wednesday Evening Shoots

There have been a number of enquiries recently regarding the restart of the Wednesday evening shoots. As it is very difficult for people to get to Roves any earlier than 6pm, we need to wait until the evenings are light enough to be able to shoot until around 7.30pm to make it worthwhile. As soon as this is the case we will be restarting the Wednesday evening shoots, hopefully this will be in around 4-6 weeks, but we will announce it as soon as the decision has been made.

Saturday Shoot Report

This week Mark was busy on Saturday morning so there was no specific Companions Challenge but as usual we were able to find plenty of things to shoot at to keep ourselves amused. After the normal warm-up on the paper targets, and back by ‘popular demand’, there was a second chance to shoot the frog on the half-jay pole: as usual most arrows missed but Clive lodged his arrow between the frog’s legs (supply your own joke!) and later on Alex managed to shoot her arrow into the rope from which froggy was suspended.

When we’d had enough of torturing Kermit (for a little while anyway), we took advantage of an open gate into the empty adjacent field for a few rounds of extended roving. This is something we’ve not had the chance to do for quite a long time and it was very enjoyable. I should admit to perhaps being a tad biased in my opinion as by some combination of skill or luck (your replies to this are NOT required, thank you!) I managed to win more than half of the arrow clouts. After the fourth one Le Chat tried to remove my arrow without me noticing but he didn’t get away with it (see pic)!

After we had lobbed a few arrows at the bear in passing (as you do), Clive had hurt his shoulder and didn’t want to shoot any more so he put up a target which he had made some time ago but which has been sat in the shed awaiting its debut. The target consisted of a set of paddles with numbers on, attached on hinges to a long batten, much like you see on a shooting range at a funfair. So the idea is to hit a particular number, which will then fall down out of sight. The target was set on top of the hay bales (no I don’t know why we didn’t think of using the big bales as a base for it months ago!) and the shooting line was divided into 2 teams, with each team being given a particular goal eg shoot numbers 1, 2 and 3, or shoot the odd numbers, etc. Given the relatively small size of the targets, we were surprisingly good at this – by the 3rd round all 6 targets were taken out in the first volley of arrows from 12 archers. If this had been one of Mark’s challenges, I think we would have been awarded a ‘PASS’ and definitely not a ‘RUBBISH!’.

Finally we finished off with various rounds of shooting at the targets with the frog hung on 1 and the bear stood in front of another. Lewis managed to skewer one of Chris Crewdson’s arrows (see pic) – we have yet to hear whether Bob has been told about the fate of his arrow or whether that’s a surprise still in store for him in the future ... (well maybe not anymore!). Anna took a particular liking to the frog: I think she might have been wondering whether it was worth giving him a kiss to see if he would turn into a charming prince? Hopefully it was the constant barrage of arrows rather than Anna’s attentions that led to the frog finally deciding he could take no more and hurling himself to the ground in what could be the world’s first photographically evidenced attempted frog-suicide (frogicide???) ... But fear not, as the next picture shows below it, the frog survived and managed to ‘froggyback’ a lift back to the shed with Le Chat.

Companions in Waiting

Companions shooting line.

Near miss for the frog.

Jenni’s Arrow was nearest again!

Clive’s number target

Split arrow

Anna and the frog prince

“SURPRISE!!”

As some of you will know, Alina celebrated a significant birthday last week (I know, I know, she doesn’t look a day over 69!!) and her loving family decided to organise a surprise party for her at Dolce Vita on Saturday night. Anyone who knows Alina can imagine how difficult it is to organise anything without her knowing about it but by some miracle (and with more than a few white lies from some of us) Andy TB managed to get her to Dolce Vita for a ‘quiet romantic meal for two’ without her having suspected anything at all. When they arrived, a group of family and friends were waiting at a table out of sight around the corner, and as you can see from the pictures, her expression when she arrived at her table was fantastic. It was a lovely night and I’m very glad that after coming through what has been a tough period for the family, they were able to celebrate in style. Here’s wishing you many more happy birthdays Alina!