I became a member of Horwich Cycling club in November 1973. The club was very old fashioned and right from the start, I was fascinated by the monthly meetings which were run on a very formal basis. The meetings were held in the old Horwich Council Chambers on polished tables laid out in a horseshoe shape which added to the ceremonial atmosphere. The ‘officials’ in the club were older members who enjoyed all aspects of being in a club, not just taking part in races, which is all that most members wanted. I remember the secretary being dismayed that so few members turned up at the meetings, although I now understand why they didn’t. I can still hear the secretary formally asking the attendees whether we were all in favour that he should sign off the minutes as a correct record of the last meeting. Personally, I enjoyed these meetings, which suited my sense of order, and overall, I was better suited to the administrative side of the club than the racing.
In later years, I helped the secretary to type up the meeting minutes each month. These, along with any news items, were published in a document called Wheel Topics, which I typed for several years. I typed on a special waxed paper which was fed into a duplicating machine, where ink and paper were added and was manually cranked to print off a few dozen copies each month. I remember the club once boasting about picking up a second-hand Gestetner to replace their Banda machine in the days long before affordable photocopiers. I became Time Trials secretary in 1982 after spending three years as assistant, and kept this post until I resigned after the 1985 season.
