Introduction to the Bulletins

In late 2009 I found a pile of old Staffordshire Bulletins; I had saved them because I had been a  Bulletin editor. I had also collected some prior to my taking on the job and had 'inherited' some from Freddie Dumbleton (a County stalwart), whose wife, Aleda, knew I would be interested in them.

So what do you do with a pile of old and faded pages of stuff that no-one is interested in any longer?  Well if you are a hoarder, a saver, a 'I can't throw those awayer' then you contact somebody on the County committee and ask "If I get them into electronic form will you put them on the County Website?"  Yes, was the reply.

So now I, with the help of a scanner, have got them onto the computer. Many of them were so badly printed and faded that I had to retype them. Some were a mixture of typing and scanning. Because I have templates for hand layouts etc, some of the Bulletins have coloured suit symbols and other things that were not part of the original. Trying to reproduce the Bulletins in their original state and layouts would have been an even bigger task.

The early Bulletins were printed on foolscap paper, which was the standard for that time; I have not tried to keep to the page numbering and there is no indication in the electronic versions of how many pages there were - I doubt that this would be of interest (but the originals will still exist, at Newcastle B.C. perhaps) in the future if anyone wanted to see them).

You have no idea how tempting it is to 'edit' the Bulletins (particularly my own contributions). I have tried to keep the integrity of them the same, but I have corrected the occasional spelling mistake (indeed the word processor does some of them automatically).

Inevitably I will have made mistakes; sometimes I would read a few lines then type them - only to look back and see that while I have kept the sense of the sentence intact the wording was different. I put back the original words when I noticed but some will have been missed. Of course you will not know unless you compare the original with my version, and that is unlikely! There will be some obvious typos - please report them to the Webmaster to sort out.

There are quite a few Bulletins missing and the chance of finding them now must be slim.
But those we have are a part of the history of the County and there are some gems of information that might not exist elsewhere.

For us 'old uns' rereading them will bring back memories of times forgotten. For those who have never seen them a quick scan may well bring to light an article that enlightens or amuses you. On a good day perhaps both!

Roy Martin

It is with great regret that we report Roy died on 28th January 2013. Roy had been poorly for some time and had been in hospital shortly before Christmas; but he returned to the bridge table in the New Year and had been playing recently at his beloved Newcastle Bridge Club.

Over the years Roy has made an outstanding contribution to bridge at both county and Club level. On the County front he had undertaken many roles. Until recently [it's now done under P2P] Roy had been the County's master points secretary. He was also the County's Bulletin editor [good old days] from the mid 80's for very many years. He himself also contributed a lot of articles for publication in the Bulletin. Many of these were highly amusing. Not least the pen names he gave to his team-mates,the Welsh Pedlar, the Headmaster, Captain Turf, the Blue Stocking, the Detective, Belapel and the Austrian Princess with Roy himself going under the Muggins pseudonym. 

On the playing front Roy has been a frequent winner of the County's premier competitions with many successes in the Bearn[Pairs], Mens Pairs, County League and KO.

Roy has of course also been an amazing stalwart at Newcastle Bridge Club where over many years he has made an even greater contribution in helping to run the Club. He was also an EBU qualified teacher and held many teaching sessions at the Club. He was also Newcastle's County rep for many years.

Roy will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

The assistant webmaster still has a few bulletins that Roy sent shortly before he died. These will be transcribed into the format for the web as time permits.