Ceilidh Success ?

Well, the numbers weren’t quite what we’d have hoped for, but clashing with the Champions league final, a surprise 60th birthday party and a fairly large Italian wedding didn’t help although most of the 50 or so guests seemed to have a good enough time of it.

We tried to market the event through facebook and email with a fairly late mailshot coming out along with the membership cards. Facebook provided 32 confirmations, 34 maybe, 66 Not coming and 54 no replies. As disapointing as that is, at least it gives us something of an idea of the type of penetration we can expect when using the social networkiong sites as our ‘marketing / advertising’.

As is typical with Old Boys events, most people came as part of a larger group and perhaps the committee have to think about that a wee bit more, finding some ‘local event champions’.

As for the event though, the venue was ideal for a KSOB event, with the GUU providing the debating room as a dance floor and the bar in the reading room - it was hoped that the venue alone would resonate with our membership, and that certainly seemed to be the case with Finlay Kerr Snr who tells us that he enjoyed his first pint in the venue back in 1959 for the princely sum of “1 and 2″ (ask your dad if you’re not sure what that means!).

Martin Coombs provided a terrific wee slide show of the many pictures that he collected during his time at Keil and we left that running for the duration of the event, creating plenty of amusement and stirring not a few memories.

The Jigger’s Ceilidh band struck all the right notes, calling each dance and generally entering the spirit of the occasion. This helped to ensure that the dance floor stayed busy all night, whilst they filled in between dances with some cracking wee tunes, allowing us to regain our breath and enjoy a wee bit of beer craic.

I’d think that we should have another go at hosting a similar event next year and would hope that more of our members past and present would come along.