SPF  PRINT CHAMPIONSHIP APRIL 11th 2010

10 IS THE NEW 8.5.……

Martin had the prints, I had the transport (and the element of surprise - I was on time!), so, with the help of George Thorogood to keep me awake we set off for Littleton. Sunshine and loud music do wonders for my driving skills, if not for Martin’s nerves.

22 clubs each submitting 20 prints that’s…. an awful lot of prints, but members of Highcliffe and Infinity had organised everything and the day started promptly at 11am.

There was some cracking stuff to see, but, can I say at this stage how proud I am of you all; OSPS is a small club but, with the exception of 1 print, none of our work had formed part of any of our other SPF entries for this season, and I consider that a moral victory - thank you all.

After 11 rounds we broke for lunch. The judges had marked… an awful lot of prints, and my tummy was rumbling (somehow I’d forgotten to have breakfast) so, we found a patch of sunshine and ate Martin’s sandwiches.

At this stage we had 100 points, and high hopes for the second half.

For those of you unfamiliar with this type of competition there are 3 judges, each marking out of 5, thus the maximum score for any print is 15 - sadly we didn’t get any maximum scores.

Maureen Toft scored two 12s and David Toft also scored a 12, this helped us amass a total of 203 points for the day.

Although we were still 37 points behind the winners, Chichester, somehow though it didn’t seem to matter. We had caught up with some old friends, seen some marvellous pictures and, on the whole, I thought our entry held up very well. There was an award for the club scoring most 10s, we shared it with New Forest and Winchester, hence “10 is the new 8.5”!

These events are always good fun and I am glad that OSPS took part, I’m already looking forward to the next one and relying on you to produce some more excellent work to maintain our high profile within the Southern Federation.

Cheryl Clark.