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The Rough-Stuff Fellowship Limited, Annual Report, 2003

 

Review of the Year

Whilst many members of this Fellowship will remember 2003 for its exceptional weather, it has been a hard year for the Fellowship, and one with considerable change. In this year we lost John Matthews, a man who did so much for the Fellowship that his personality ran through us like the words through a stick of rock. He will be sadly missed.

Only three issues of the Rough Stuff Journal were delivered this year. The Journal lies at the core of the Fellowships' functioning and communications that its regular and reasonably prompt distribution is essential to our health. It is therefore no surprise that this year has seen an acceleration in membership decline, and many poorly attended events.

2003 was the driest and sunniest summer on record. With excellent weather from early spring until late autumn, there can hardly have been a better year for enjoying the tracks of this country. Our well-attended Easter Meet at Reeth had largely sunny but cold conditions. But despite the good weather, many other events were poorly attended.

 

Membership

Our membership stands at 687 at the end of the year, a decline of 37 (5%) during the year. This is an acceleration in the membership decline. John Matthews was in post as New Membership Secretary at the time of his passing. This resulted in an extended hiatus in the processing of membership applications, and possibly some were lost. Simeon Orme has been co-opted to take his place. We are grateful to him for the considerable task of locating John Matthews' files and transferring them to a modern computer database.

 

The Rough-Stuff Journal

Owing to pressures of work, Richard Harries was only able to edit three issues of the Rough-Stuff Journal in 2003. In partial compensation he expanded the size of the joint autumn/winter issue. Richard has tendered his resignation, as he regrets he is not in position to ensure a regular frequency. We thank him for his efforts in this key job over the last 3 years.

During Richard's editorship our journal has been designed and produced by Linda Bussey and Tim Mackey. They put in an extraordinary amount of work to tight deadlines and gave us an elegant journal full of wonderful pictures.

Norman Hodghton has been co-opted to edit the journal at a rate of six journals per year, and has indicated he will continue if elected at the AGM. Norman has been developing his own design for the journal, and has selected a new printer.

 

Publicity

Our stand at the York Rally has been reconstructed. John Brewer continues to run the website www.rsf.org.uk efficiently, and it attracts increasing traffic.

 

Accounts

The subscription was increased from £10 to £12 this year. The accounts show a gain for the year of £1010. Without the legacy and other items from the estate of John Matthews amounting to £1175, we would have shown a small loss. This situation is somewhat to the embarrassment of the Directors, as we had indicated to the membership that increased subscriptions would be reinforced by drawing on our reserves to maintain expenditure on the journal. However we are trusting that new arrangements put in place for delivering the journal will enable us to deliver on that in the coming year.

 

SIGNED: Norman R Hodghton, Simon C Preston, Ivan Viehoff (Directors)