The Pint Sized Plan for Stan

In Attendance: +Iain Stuart +John Urquhart +Martin Hatfield and a guest appearance from the long lost +Chris Sheppard

Weather: Cold, Damn Cold

This week saw us planning for Stan's Birthday Bash in a place of significance to +Martin Hatfield 

The birthday is next week - and will consist of a longlevens pub crawl - but for now we have the entertainment that is "The Famous Pint Pot"...

Who is that??  Not that bloke off of "Come Dine With Me" surely?

This is a strange tardis like pub situated right outside the sports facility that is "GL1" in the almost center of Gloucester.  I'm told that in days gone by it was a-heaving and a-thriving sort of place that you'd struggle to get served in through the throng of individuals packed into the now non-existent garden in the summer months.

Now - it's a bit sad and dejected.  It still gets busy-ish - but like all city pubs it's struggling to keep going under the weight of the financial burden placed upon it vs the lack of income due to the financial burdens placed upon their patrons.  We at the WTC do our best to fix this problem but it's an on-going battle that even we may well loose in the long run.

Regardless of all this, The "pot" still holds a special place in the heart of one of members - that of Claude...  It was on this very spot just over two years ago, that the WTC visited the "Pot" on a cold December evening. Not expecting much, we got involved in the beer - and were confronted with a "Christmas Do" as well a couple of ladies who were clearly "out for a quiet night".  As I recall (through the fog of alchozhimers) +Jason Brown was with us - and he was (as he does) dancing around like fool and generally disturbing the ladies who didn't want to be disturbed.

It was somewhere around this point that our Claude played a very smooth card and interjected between +Jason Brown and the ladies (which in all fairness kept Mr Brown from any trouble) and at that moment he set eyes upon "Aunty Anne" - almost as if it were across a crowded room/bar/pub with a sticky carpet. From that moment forward they have been an "item" to use the parlance of our times, and as the kids say - they may well be "doing" each other (whatever that means).  We continue to ask if we need to buy suits, or hats for our other halves in the vein hope that there might be a wedding on the cards (after all it is a damn good day out - as both +Golfyball and +Jon Clark will attest to.... Still - nothing as yet - although I understand they do at least co-habitate now - which really is moments away from being hitched anyway.

...and so its for this reason, that even though the "pot" is a bit of a "bin" - it's a bin that we all quite like really - and as such, we can put up with it's lack of food, strange ambience (permanent hits of the 80's and 90's on the... is there a Jukebox or is someone playing a tape???), sticky carpet, and dodgy beer..

In the end - as always - a good time was had. Much beer was consumed and we staggered off into the darkness to nurse tomorrows headache.