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De Laune News – Val the Peach

The article posted by Mark last month really puts into perspective just
how much work goes on behind the scenes with making this club of ours run
smoothly.

I have always had the opinion that a regular newsletter/magazine is
crucial - a linch pin for any club, to keep members informed of club activities.
Like Mark, Tony and I took on the editorship because no one else came forward.
We had a 10 year stint from February 1974. It was at a point in our life when
I was 'semi-retired' acting as a full time mum to Claire at just 14 months old.
I had embarked upon a racing comeback, training regularly on the rollers in
the garage and had started to go well considering I had had almost a decade
lay off. Tony had also started racing again and producing some reasonable
times just prior to the era when he would start to break club records with
regularity, so, all in all not much of a retirement really but a relatively busy
life although self inflicted. Charlie Carlton had been editor for 1 year before
us, however it wasn't until we collected all the paraphanalia for the job when
it dawned on us just what we had taken on. Claire had to be turfed out of
her bedroom to make space for the old Gestetner machine. Claire's bedroom
became the 'office' but she gained 'second' bedroom status for all her toys
etc.

We got to grips with the task fairly quickly including the temperamental
Gestetner printer which could be run electronically but it had a habit of taking
10 pages instead of 1 from time to time, thus jamming up the whole works,
this caused us spending twice as long sorting it out. We still laugh now about
it now. The production procedure was to collect all the handwritten copy
then, using a manual typewriter, re-type all the copy onto flimsey stencils
which when completed, were placed on the inky roller of the printer – I either
trusted the automatic method or, as was the case most of the time, turn
the handle for each page. The biggest problem was the ink took a few
seconds to dry, so we used to peg each page up on makeshift lines across
room to speed up production. Once dry, paper was re-stacked, ready to be
printed on the reverse. The drying process was used again before
compilation of the finished pages. Progress could sometimes be slow.

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