Photos by Lyn Gauntlett. Left click on the images to enlarge
Last Friday the Choir Hall was turned into something resembling Chepstow Race Track without the grass for the Annual run of the Caldicot Male Voice Choir Race Night. This event, now organised for the third time by chorister Ron Powell, has raised over £110,000 for over the past 23 years and has enabled the choir to pay the expenses, not only of running the Choir Hall but also to provide funds for much of its charity work.
This year the event was much improved by the use of a new cinema quality projector and screen which enabled the use of digitalised random film clips of races to be showed, rather than the previous reel to reel displays. Everyone agreed that this was a fantastic improvement and added significantly to the event. Many thanks to Leon Jones for acquiring the system and operating it on the night. This equipment belongs to the choir and will be used to hold future cinema club evenings. Details fo this will soon be announced.
Altogether eight races were run and almost 200 punters had the chance to go to the bookies to place their bets and hopefully not lose their shirts. Fortunately no one did but after the fabulous buffet organised by Ron’s wife Linda, a few were bursting out of theirs.
Many thanks are extended not only to Ron, Linda and Leon for all their hard work but to the bar staff of David, Wyn and Lee, to Roger Francis for working the lights, to Mike Thurman for polishing the floor single handed on the Wednesday before and to all those who set and cleared away all the chairs, tables and litter.
A special debt of gratitude is extended to the main sponsors, Roadchef, Magor and Monmouthshire Windows and to all the many other sponsors of races and horses without whom the night would not have been possible. The raffle was great success with many fabulous prizes. More details will follow.
There is a video clip of one of the races and more photographs on the choir’s Caldicot Mvc Facebook page.