Vintage Reds tied up the end of the year with the December meeting, followed by lunch.

We filled the restaurant, an impressive turn-out of VRs and family members which augurs well for next year’s activities.

The diners were treated to a brief performance of songs: Joe Hill, Bread and Roses, and Solidarity, sung by the VR Christmas Lunch Specialist Singers. Then the plates arrived and we mowed our way through large quantities of food and drink.

The Singers’ table encountered some confusion in the ordering and paying for its dishes; but from this confusion has sprung Art, namely a poem commemorating the event:

Never mind the metre, keep an eye out for the bones
by Bill Rowlings

In budding VR mythology
There’s a new fishy story:
about what happened when
five VRs ordered John Dory.

At Christmas time ‘15
They’d come along to sing;
But the cafe’s harried cashiers
effected an unseasonal ‘sting’.

Bronnie, Annie, Jenny, Pete
and Helen all chose the dish:
ordering Dory a la carte
…but the cafe ran out of the fish.

Annie and Pete, acting Solomonic,
split in two one Dory meal supplied.
But overworked cafe workers billed
on orders lodged, not plates arrived.

Clever VRs spotted the glitch,
saving our Dennis’s dollars.
You can’t put anything over
retired trade union scholars.