Well, here we are the wrong side of ‘Straya Day and fast heading into 2016 and everything that brings us!

As you will have hopefully noticed over the last couple of months, we have started using the webmail newsletter as our principal reminder mechanism for events. This means that we can keep you up to date, without me hassling you here! Please also remember that the Club’s calendar on the website is our “gold standard” so we aim to keep that as up to date as possible.

Notwithstanding that, I need to draw your attention to a few exciting up-coming events: February 6th sees CLA kick off the CSCA Championships at Wakefield. We then have our first Shed Tour to Daniel Bando’s (by his admission compact) Shed on February 17th (third Wednesday of the month please note.)

In early March (4-6th), we’ll be putting on the first weekend run of the year to Thredbo, and then to cap off March we will be gathering at Simply Sports Cars for our General Meeting on March 16th. This social evening will include a visual feast of in-car footage from John Bower’s Jim Clarke Type 25 being punted around at Goodwood by Andy Middlehurst, and then some footage shot at Monaco Historique by the Classic Team Lotus crew. Can’t wait!

We had our first Committee meeting of the year in early January and the minutes and actions are up on the members area of the website; all comments and feedback gratefully received – I know you know how hard the Committee works on your behalf but I’ll say it anyway – thanks guys.

The TUFT’s Eleven. So close you can almost taste it.

This year is the Diamond Jubilee for the Lotus Eleven, so we are hoping to get as many of the 10 local cars (4% of the global population!) together at Retro Racefest over the Queens Birthday weekend in June. Next year (2017) will be the Diamond Jubilee for the Elite (Type 14) and Brian Caldersmith is already geeing up as many of the 40-something owners for that. Please feel free to come along to support these events as it takes a lot of effort to pull these cars (and their owners!) out of the wood-work and together.

As always may I make a plea to you all to consider putting pen to paper with some photos of whatever you are enjoying doing with your car and/or your friends – we love reading about it all and the photos brighten up everyone’s day.

Enough from me – have a great month, and if the rain stops I hope you get the car out!

Keep safe, upright and on the black stuff!

Pip pip,
Ashton.