We met at the Harborough Theatre, a building owned and maintained by the local dramatic society. The theatre staff made us feel  very welcome, and provided us with a well equipped lounge/rehearsal room for our meeting, complete with adjacent kitchen to serve tea, coffee and cakes. The cakes had been made by Peta and proved very popular.

The actual AGM took very little time. As an unincorporated association with no charitable status, we are free to set our own rules as to how it is run, and short was definitely the preferred option.  The officers were re-elected unopposed, some suggestions for the next meeting were discussed, and that was really it.

Tony Faulkner then talked about the microphones he had helped to develop for the Rǿde company.  The new ribbon microphone was a major advance, both in quality and the expected price, which could be more than I paid for my car.  Tony had also brought some other Rǿde microphones which demonstrated the company’s desire to extend their market from the ’good value at the price’ products to those which were just good.

We then had a tour of the theatre in the company of its sound engineers, who were able to show and demonstrate the sound systems used, and the software which controls them.  This was an interesting bonus, as many of us perform these functions in our own theatres.

Lunch was a self-help affair, but there are plenty of cafés and food shops in the town, so no-one starved.

After lunch, we were shown two films made by a group of local amateur film makers.  One was the story of the discovery of a major hoard of Iron-age and Roman coins by amateur archaeologists in a local village.  This was recognised as a find of national importance, and experts from the British museum were called in to assist the local archaeological team.  The second film was the story of the building of the Foxton lock flight and the adjacent inclined plane.  Both these were designed to overcome the height difference between two previously unconnected canals, and hence allow them to compete against road and rail.  The inclined plane was abandoned, but the flight of ten locks still exists and is used by leisure traffic.

Last on the agenda was the competition, which was organised as simply as possible.  Bring it, play it, let it be judged.  There was no entry fee and no entry form.  The judging was done by the two resident theatre sound men, Peter and Bob.

There were 6 entries brought along on the day from Stewart, Richard, David and Peter.  Mike and Geoffrey couldn’t attend the meeting in person due to personal reasons but as they had paid the fee they were able to enter the contest.

The two theatre technicians Peter and Bob agreed to act as unbiased judges and were asked to select just one entry as a winner.  It wasn’t an easy task as there were 3 music and 3 speech entries.

They explained that they judged them on technical quality, originality and entertainment values.  After comparing notes they announced that they had both independently selected the entry by Peter (Paul Kirner’s Music Palace) as the winner.