Deeside Squash and Racquetball Club

Thursday, 16 February 2012

Another blast from the past

From http://deesidesquashracquetballclub.blogspot.com/

Hands up those who instantly recognised this face from yesterday's P & J?:

It must have been well over 20 years ago when a slightly younger looking Lindsay Masson arrived at Banchory Squash Club one midweek night, in tow with a very young Gary Coutts, who, as most know, went on to become our Club Champion God knows how many times.

The two of them worked on the Queen's Estate at Balmoral and had been playing a bit of squash at Craigendarroch, but had heard about Banchory Squash Club, which, at the time, was thriving (relatively speaking), and they wanted to try their hand and improve their games.

Of course, they were easy meat at first, but it didn't take Gary long to outstrip those of us who were there then. Lindsay played for a while but he wasn't as talented as Gary and soon drifted away.

Also about that time, we had Anthea Moore come from the Balmoral Estate and she played in our 3rd time for a few years.

Aah - memories.

Wednesday, 11 January 2012

Electricity/Finances

From http://deesidesquashracquetballclub.blogspot.com/

The latest quarterly bill for electricity up to Xmas has been received from Findrack Estate:

As usual, their arithmetic is slightly suspect as is the lack of consistency of the rate charged, but it's only buttons and it's in our favour again, so I'm just going to pay it.

The mount consumed in the last quarter was 10% lower than the same time last year, and the overall cost is just over £1 per day, which is certainly the cheapest squash we have ever had, or likely to have - by a long way!

Once I've paid this, I will have funds in hand of £203 and, if we're lucky and no other costs are incurred, this will last us up until about June this year, after which I'll need to make another cash call if we are to continue to use the facility.

With user numbers diminishing, the chances are that we will only have about 8 contributing to our costs going forward, and with electricity costs likely to be rising to about £500 p.a., this will mean about £60 per head. This would, however, be the first cash call for 2 years - effectively this season has been a free one.

Friday, 9 December 2011

Councillor's letter

From http://deesidesquashracquetballclub.blogspot.com/

This week's Piper contains a letter from local Councillor, Jill Webster, in defence of her decision to support the application to approve the development at Inchmarlo. It's worth reading - and she obviously believes that all the peripheral ventures - including squash courts - will go ahead as planned.

Time will tell, of course, but if it does happen, here's hoping it won't take anywhere near as long as the planned multi-sports complex at Hill of Banchory, which, after 15 years or so of waiting, still shows no signs of coming to fruition. The older members of the squash club (i.e. all of us!) will recall that it was Jamie Burnett's approach to our then captain, Ian Dring, in the mid-1990's about the possibility of us moving to H.o.B., and the lack of action that then followed, that led to RS-M eventually resorting to litigation to get us out so that she could get the plans to build flats on our courts moving.

Behind the scenes there have been a few developments recently. Richard Simcox has been in regular contact with Colin Wilson concerning the squash courts at Inchmarlo and they seem keen to go ahead now that planning permission has been granted. In parallel, there has been a little movement in the KGV project - Ken Black attended a recent update meeting and they are now apparently making progress - although it has to be remembered that the original title of this project was KGV 2000! Our strategy is to try to encourage both of them and hope that, sooner or later, we will get courts to play on in Banchory again.

Here's Jill Webster's letter to the Piper: