My bridge career began in 1978 when Colin – my husband – and I attended our first bridge lesson. Within 6 weeks we played in the prestigious Palace Hotel Congress in Torquay where we finished bottom in our first three sessions and then in the fourth we came second to bottom - we were delighted to have “beaten” someone – and at that moment we got the bug!
As is common, we had a long gap without playing much when children arrived on the scene – but in 1992 we followed up an advertisement of a group looking to start a duplicate bridge club in Warminster, attending a
meeting where I became the inaugural Secretary.
Since 1995 I have been a committee member of the Wiltshire CBA and 12 years ago I took over the running of the County’s annual green pointed weekend. I moved the venue to a more economical Bath University hall and the numbers have remained at a capacity of 60 tables per day ever since.
I retired from working in 2016 having had a background in Sales and Marketing in a wide variety of organisations, my last post being as Head of Admissions of a Boarding School.
In 2019 I finally won my 600th green point enabling me to claim a title of Grandmaster. However, I am the first to admit that this title is in recognition of the fact that I have been playing for over 40 years, have played in a lot of tournaments and spent a lot of money on my addiction to the game!
My aim now is to “give back” to the game that has given me so much enjoyment. I really enjoy organising our Supervised Play sessions and my greatest achievement now is when partnering one of our students and seeing them improve.
2020 has brought more change in the bridge world than at any other time. Almost immediately on going into Lockdown, I became involved in starting Wiltshire regular games on BBO. We play twice a week, run a Teams league and also several one-off tournaments including several sessions we call Social games for the Nine High players. I also helped move the Warminster club to a Virtual club on BBO and we now also run a weekly duplicate and a Supervised session on Realbridge.
I was co-opted onto the EBU board in January 2021 with my remit being to represent the grassroots bridge players who form the vast majority of the EBU members.
In case anyone is wondering – Colin is still my regular bridge partner – and we are still married!
January 2021