OLDEST SURVIVING MEMBER

By the title of this post, I mean the Club member who started at the earliest date with the Vignal. I played against him this morning, & as we have confirmation from Madame Gardet that Alan Bennett (not the author of this name) was already a member in 1982, I feel obliged to make the fact known, & also to accede to his request to publish a photo of himself. Here is one above, & there will be one somewhere on my tennis website later.

If any of you have not met Alan, it will be because he has done a great deal of work these last few years in Kazakhstan, looking for oil - to keep 'the home fires burning', & to keep our cars on the road. Alan is a geophysicist specialising in seismic studies (he sets up earth vibrations by explosives, or other means & records the subsequent vibrational echos. This gives information as to where oil may possibly be found, & so to where drilling could be profitable.)

On the other hand, you may be surprised to learn that Alan's wife, Carmen in her own speciality, recently became World champion in Dog Obedience Training. (We have no evidence that she has ever practised these skills on Alan! or has ever taken her animals to prospective oilfields in sniffing trials.)

The only other competitor for the title of longest serving member, as far as we know, is Stefan van Holst of Frankfurt: but his membership is recorded as starting in 1984, two years after Alan. We await any claims from other readers............