Vol 5, No 15
Articles in this issue
- A standing note that the latest hour for reception of copy for the "Gazette" is 5.30 p.m. on Tuesdays.
- Captain T. E. Scrutton repeats his appeal for ticket sales and entries for the meeting of the 24th, racing at 3 p.m. punctually, over five events, five miles amateur scratch for gold, silver and bronze club medals, two miles scratch for the Ladies' Challenge Prizes, two miles amateur handicap, one mile handicap and the ten miles District Challenge Race. Entrance is 2s. 6d. for the first four, members enter free on their badge with two ladies' tickets, and advance tickets are 1s. from the Captain or the principal bicycle agents.
- The Captain again asks for riders and spectators at Surbiton on Thursday the 22nd, wondering whether the Bath flyers will volunteer for the fifteen miles. Racing begins at six p.m., admission is one shilling, and trains leave Waterloo at 5.7, 5.25, 5.50 and 6.15, returning from Surbiton at 8.40, 9.8 and 9.20.
- A General Meet is fixed for Ewell on the 1st proximo, the districts joining in turn, the N.E. from Lea Bridge Road at 3.0 to "Jack Straw's" for the N.W. at 4.0, on to Kew for the W. at the "Coach and Horses" at 5.0, then Kingston for the S.W. at 5.30, while the S.E. Blackheath Division leaves Lewisham Church at 3.30 to pick up the Croydon Division at 4.30. Tea is arranged as usual at the "Glyn Arms," no district is to be given more than ten minutes' grace, and there will be a full moon to help the ride home.
- The Executive meeting of 6th June at 17, Ironmonger Lane dealt with the Championships, several questions of amateurism, and ratified a local centre for Devon and Cornwall. A long report of the quarterly Council Meeting at the Manchester Hotel, Aldersgate Street, follows: T. E. Scrutton in the chair before more than seventy delegates, A. J. Wilson's amendment on the road tricycle championship rejected, H. M. Oliver and Walter Platt appointed official handicappers for the Midlands and the North, W. Pye English's proposal to add three Executive members carried, the chairman's motion against advertising prize values lost, and G. F. Cobb, M.A., Scrutton and English elected president, treasurer and secretary unopposed.
- The district's meeting at Surbiton on Thursday the 8th went off well despite torrents of rain and a thin crowd, with Dr. Coleman as judge and Pem Coleman taking the times; the two first prizes fell to the S.E. and the two seconds to the N.W. C. A. Brown took the One Mile Members' Handicap final from E. S. Price and Harold Smith in 2min. 55¾sec. after a neck-and-neck straight, and H. G. A. Brown won the One Mile Novices Race by sixty yards from W. T. Hill; W. T. Thorn rode having not been on a machine for over a year. Reported by D. T. Nops.
- Reprinted from the "Athletic Review": the Wanderers B.C. got up a One Mile Invitation Handicap expressly to let H. L. Cortis attack Keith-Falconer's two miles record, and after a wet day the evening turned still and fast. Riding on for the second mile Cortis finished in 5min. 39¾sec., nearly three seconds outside, though his mile and a half and mile and three-quarters were both best on record; in the final he took the mile from Hamilton by a yard in 2min. 41¾sec., with a 41sec. first lap, 1min. 20sec. half and 2min. 1¼sec. three-quarters, all records, and the writer is certain that had Cortis known he was breaking record the watch would have shown 2min. 40sec. or less.
- W. R. Sewell's humorous essay wonders what use the bugle calls in the Club blue book now are, relics of the old red sandstone period of the L.B.C. when men rode "Stassens" with 1¼in. tyres and yet kept the right end uppermost. He records the N.W. "Infant Phenomenon," thirteen stone, going over the handles at eighteen miles an hour and sliding on his head like a curling stone with nothing worse than a thinned eyebrow, and salutes the Northern Guide's blind-lane short-cut jokes, above all the Great Ashridge Park joke, in which the N.G. led his victims to the monument and only then remembered he had left the written permission behind.
- The run table: the N.E. from Lea Bridge Road to Upminster ("Bell") to meet the S.E. Blackheath Division, the N.W. by Tally Ho! to Essendon ("Salisbury Crest"), and the W., S.W. and S.E. Croydon Division converging on Thames Ditton, with the Annual Races on 24th June and the Ewell General Meet on 1st July.
- District reports for 10th June and notices for the 17th. Theo. Godlee describes the N.E.'s wet run over the Ongar lanes to Christie's house, where eight were entertained before a soaking beyond Chigwell; W. J. Williams reports the N.W.'s thin muster to "The Swan," Rickmansworth, 34½ miles by Harrow, Pinner and Moor Park, and corrects the St. Albans return to 25 men and three visitors, a district record. The W. and S.W. picnic at Boulder Mere by Wisley Hut fills several columns, salmon and cucumber, lamb and mint sauce, a ham, cutlets and jellies out of the "Sociable" locker, a passage from Harry J. Swindley in "The Wheel World," and Miss Constance Bayley finding the insect-eating Sundew, while H. G. A. Brown reports the S.E. at the "Five Bells," Chelsfield, joined by R. H. M. Francis, still unable to move the hand he hurt falling in Savernake Forest during the Bath Trial.
- "Rambler" on G. F. Beck entering the Novice Race for a joke, recalling the President beating him by five feet for the 1878 Short Distance Amateur Championship, the S.W.'s feast on the banks of "Boulder Mere" against other districts' unvarying ham and eggs, four men struggling up Pain's Hill with loaves until one escaped through the bottom of its bag, the S.W. dog brought along to clean the plates, and the N.E.'s record attendance of 16. He closes with his own persecuted Bath Trial: the squeak in his hind wheel cured only when the pneumatic infant feeder lashed to his back emptied its tea through the vent hole over the bearings, time lost to the Zulu grave on Marlborough Downs and the grey wethers, and a coach who tired of waiting at Reading and poured the sherry and sandwiches into the man in front.
- A member of some years' standing on the Race Committee answers "Cassiopeia" on free tickets: the annual Race Meeting is a Club meet which members attend free and so bring paying friends, whereas a minor evening fixture like the O.U.Bi.C. v. L.B.C. has no entry fees and depends wholly on the gate. R. S. Charsley writes from the Oxford University Bicycle Club to add the Rev. R. H. Charsley, who rode from Oxford and part of the way back on his Velociman and was the oldest man present, to the St. Albans return, and R. G. Francis protests at being singled out by "Rambler" for riding up from St. Albans Station to the "Peahen," suspecting a sly hit at his hill-climbing.
- A set of numbered mottoes for the Bath Trial finishers, drawn from Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" (the frightful fiend that treads close behind), Addison's "Cato," Cowper's "The Task" on the two kings of Brentford on one throne, "Much Ado About Nothing," "Coriolanus" ("Hear you this Triton of the minnows?") and a nursery rhyme on the bare cupboard.
- R. H. C. is told "Next week."