The Midget & Sprite Club Surrey Area News

The August monthly club meet at the Blue Ball brought out 10 Spridgets including new members Phil and Paula's lovely Sprite Mk III - welcome to the club Phil and Paula, and look forward to seeing more of you and your car.

Alan has long promised to bring his friend Eric and colleagues with Healey Silverstones, and in August we hit the jackpot, with no less than 3 Silverstones, and also a Tickford saloon /A special welcome therefore to our Warwick built friends (the cars that is).

With the weddings of 2 sons this summer, my involvement in shows, runs etc has been sadly reduced, but there you go priorities have to be changed sometimes!

So it was that the Loseley Park Show was graced by 12 cars from the Surrey area. It was able to show off the Surrey Area's new Gazebo, purchased with assistance from the M&SC and two of our regulars, Trevor Taylor in his Austin Seven, and David Southcott in his Sunbeam Talbot, where visitors to the stand whilst supporting their other marques in the field.

August was also the month for our annual Treasure Hunt, well organised by Laura and Chris who were the winners last year. After about 11 miles of driving in country lanes, some new faces joined the hunt for clues in the picturesque village of Shere,

although for some the prospect of many antiques was a major pull, whilst for others the beer was the main attraction. Diana and Mark won this year, with 40 points out of a maximum of 55, with the other end of the scale being represented by 3.5 points - (Before or after the beer?)

Many thanks to Laura and Chris for organising this year's hunt, together with weather to match. Diana and Mark will now be planning the 2000 treasure hunt already I'm sure!

10th October heralds the Sandown Park MG Show, where we will have a club stand, so we look forward to seeing South of England members there.

August 15th, 9.15 a.m Mark and I arrived at the beautiful Loseley Park, near Guildford, on a bright, It slightly chilly, Sunday morning an early start for us and an even earlier one for others. We were pleased to see that others were already there waiting for Instructions We had undertaken the daunting task of organizing the Surrey area stand. Although the club had been allocated a fairly generous space, we had to work out how best to arrange 12 cars and our new Midget and Sprite Club Gazebo.

They say many hands make light work, but I am not entirely sure that this is true when there are nine adults and three children all trying erect one gazebo with only one set of instructions. However we eventually managed the task and arranged and rearranged the cars that had arrived to everyone's satisfaction, and settled down to await the others, drink coffee and enjoy the show.

During the next quarter of an hour most of the rest of the motley crew arrived, to cries of 'where were you when we needed your help'. Having extricated Reggie from the M.G. Owner's club stand, (I thought it was a bit strange that there were a few M. G. B.s around') and Introduced ourselves to Gilly and her pretty pale blue Frogeye our stand was complete :

2 Frogeyes, 1 Innocenti, 1 Sprite MK 2, 1 Midget Mk 1, 1 Sprite Mk 3, 1 Midget Mk 2, 1 Austin Sprite and 4 Midget Mk 3 . A good range of models and colours.

The show, now a major event In the Surrey Area Calender, is huge. Run In aid of the Queen Elizabeth Foundation for Disabled People, It attracts thousands of people and last year raised over £30,000. Apart from an enormous range of classic cars and commercial vehicles, craft fair and auto-jumble, there are display teams of motorcycles and freefall parachutists. Generally something for everyone.

Several of our members paraded around the show-ring and we had lots of visitors to the stand. We were pleased to see Brian Hewitt, from Farnham, and James Grlmster, from Shropshire, who both dropped into say hello. We would also like to thank all those who participated In the event and brought their cars to display on the stand, many for the first time :- Chris N and Ali, Chris B and Laura, Dai and Cathy, Jason and Alma, Kirk and Linda, Phil and Paula, Geoff, Gilly, Mike and Reggie.

A great time was had by all. The gazebo was much easier to take down than to erect, it was dry for most of the day and we didn't get too wet on the way home. We hope to see you all and more next year.


We met at Cobham car park	4 in Midget!	"Now, no roofs up it's not an MGF!"

Shere Village	We had to park allover the place	The White Horse for beer & tucker

A lost Austin Ten	Second Prize to Mark & Dawn	First prize to Diana & Mark