Litten Tree October 2003
What happened

The inaugural meeting of the Citi-UK Pensioners Club was a huge success thanks to all those that came along and packed out the Litten Tree.

To justify saying the above, I have only to quote from two e-mails I received.
Quote 1: "I thought it went extremely well - The Litten Tree was perfect and I thought the food etc. was very good. In particular, it was very nice to have a greeting from the charming girl at the door - at least I knew I was in the right place (becomes more of a problem these days!!!!)"
Quote 2: "Today's event by any form of measurement was a great success"
Enough said about The Litten Tree.

One problem though, … entirely of my making …. I caused real problems for some, in that I erroneously mentioned in the early web-site pages that the event was in Old Broad Street. Whilst I quickly changed the site to Old Street, and sent out e-mails to everyone, some e-mails were not received, leaving frustrated Citi-UK pensioners striding up and down Old Broad Street wondering where The Litten Tree was! I am sorry for the problem I created them and hope that it did not spoil their day too much. (I sent out 'bulk' e-mails, so I wonder whether some Internet Service Providers thought they were spam mail and didn't forward them. It would help in future if you would all be kind enough to 'reply' with an acknowledgement so that I can mark off receipt and perhaps resend if necessary.)

The Inaugural meeting started at 11.30am and went on for some time in an effort to get the Club kick-started. I am very pleased that 28 members got there for this part - no one really likes all the paperwork stuff.

Minutes of the meeting are available, but in general, the club is well-funded, the Bye Laws were agreed and it was unanimously agreed to have a £5.00 annual subscription. Whilst attendees were generally unwilling to put themselves forward at the 'official' meeting, several have contacted me since and asked to help, especially with further social events, for which several ideas are being considered.

At 12.35pm, when that was all over, a forum was opened to discuss pension 'issues'. For those who attended and have short memories, but especially for those who could not attend, I have written a summary of what happened during the discussions, putting them into a Question and Answer format, to, hopefully, help make it more readable. Please see attachment.
There was also a long discussion about how we can replace the sort of function that Pam Ewin so competently dealt with for many years. For understandable reasons, Citigroup are no longer able to provide that function, but we need to seek ways of trying to fill at least some of that gap. Ideas have been floated which will be discussed by the Committee in due course.
The web-site www.citi-uk-pensioners.co.uk is being very favourably received, having had over 600 visits so far. A number of good, constructive, suggestions have been offered to further improve it.
John Fisher has opened-up a 'closed' Yahoo E-mail discussion group. It is hoped that members with PC's will use this to contact other members, and as a result of discussion, define those matters that the Club should pursue. The Yahoo group can only be accessed by a PC. Details can be found on the web site.

The food and drink became available at 1pm, which seemed to be enjoyed by all 85 who attended. There was certainly not only quality, but also 'an abundance' of quantity, (plenty of food being left over). For those who wanted a drink earlier than 1pm, the bar was open for coffee and alcohol for attendees to purchase at their own expense. (We discovered that after 2pm, the Bitter was down to £0.99p per pint! Which may help to explain why they nearly ran out of the stuff. ---- The Litten Tree will know better next time!)

There are photographs available on the web-site. Please be aware that the quality has been reduced to a minimum so that they do not take too long to down-load. But if you are prepared to wait, there are thirty odd photographs to plod through! They are shown in the same order that I took them, the last ones being around 4pm. What time the last attendees left, I don't know; but they had to be on Lager by that time!

Click here for Litten Tree photographs

For those of you who attended - thank you.
For those who wanted to, but couldn't - thank you also.
It was a great event which will be repeated, at the same place, same hour on 21st October 2004, so, if you can, now is the time to mark your diary!

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