As part of this winter’s work on maintaining and improving our facilities, we’re investing heavily in our green. Well we are a bowling club and if we can’t continue to offer the best possible playing surface, we’re not getting our priorities right.

There’s no doubt our green was not as fast as some would have liked this last season and the cause was almost certainly the softness of the under-soil. Our magnificent green keeper, John Swift, therefore recommended removing a ton or so of plugs from the green and backfilling with a several tons of sand and soil dressing.

This of course is one of those jobs where weather conditions are critical. John and his son Danny not only had to plan the work around the weather but around the needs of other clubs having the same job done whilst the specialist equipment is on hire.

Today was our day for removing the plugs and having the dressing delivered.

Now the removal of the plugs is a one-man job, John steering the kit around the green leaving thousands of plugs where they come out. The rest of the job is decidedly labour intensive, far too much for Danny to manage alone. The plugs have to be gathered with soft scoops, a little like snow shovels and then lifted onto wheelbarrows to be taken away. Here we were very lucky, in that B&NES Parks Department was able to make use of the plugs right outside our gate, so no great distance for the barrows.

Five pallets, two hundred sacks in all, of dressing were delivered at 9.30am. At this stage we were far more concerned with getting all the plugs off the green before the forecast rain arrived. Again B&NES Parks Department came to our aid and allowed the delivery lorry to unload the pallets in their depot, on the understanding we would have it all out by the end of the week.

Our team of volunteers were so efficient with the removal of the plugs that we were able to press on with transferring the dressing to the Club. Johns Swift’s van, Bob’s van and my trailer were put to full use in the transfer and we got the whole lot done before 1.00pm.

The only reason we got so much done in so short a time was the magnificent response to my appeal for volunteer labourers and of course the efforts of John and Danny Swift.

So, I’m going to break my usual protocol on here and name the volunteers who went to with a will. I’m offering, on behalf of all the other Club Members, a very big “thank you” to John Maggs, John Nix, John Mead, Bob Harris, Alan Brown, Eric Church, Nigel Newbery, Derek Phelps and Ian Tweedie. On behalf of those just named, I’ll also offer our thanks to Mike Smart; not able to pull his weight on a barrow any more, but we really did appreciate the teas and coffees.

I might add, most of those volunteers also give their time regularly to the Monday morning Winter Work Crew, so it was two days in a row for some of us. Feel free to express your thanks to these Club stalwarts; any time, any place, most of us drink cider.

That’s it then, many hands made light work of it and the rest of the Club and all our visitors will reap the benefit for several seasons to come, we hope.