Темы с участием Steve Cuthbert

Richard Loxley - 2/22/2018 18:02 - Наверх #

Hi Steve,

Great photo! I think that must have been slightly before I joined the Freaks, as I moved to the South West in September 1993, and started unicycling towards the end of 1994. I was definitely playing with Freaks by 1995 as I've got one of the Freaks newsletters from November 1995, and it lists events that I remember going to.

I don't remember all the names and faces, but here are some names mentioned in the two newsletters I still have:

Nov 1995, newsletter 1:
Adam, Flo, Nik, Steve, Paul, Noel, Matt (the team line-up for a tournament in London).
Louise (B team in Stroud tournament).

Jan 1996, newsletter 2:
Johnny, Jonathan, Paul, Noel, Ben (mentions a move to Australia, but that might have been a joke), Nick, Steve, Louise, Mat, Steve.

I also remember: Tanat Lewis, Pete Haworth, Jamie Fletcher, and myself of course (Richard Loxley).

When I joined in about 1995 Freaks was meeting at the United Reformed Church Hall in Horfield. We played there for a few years until the hall was redecorated and the owners didn't want us playing hockey in there and scuffing the new paintwork!

They did find us another church hall first though, which was nice of them. On Gloucester Road, it wasn't nearly as nice, and it was full of junk from jumble sales, but it kept us going for a while. I still have a scar on my hand from a metal eggcup that got embedded in my hand after I took a spill into a pile of jumble!

Freaks carried on until probably 1998/1999, when we stopped meeting as the second church hall closed for renovation. By that time there were only four of us left in the club, and so we didn't think it was worth finding another venue as we kept having to cancel anyway due to too few players.

We started up again in 2006. We were contacted by a couple of people who were learning to unicycle in order to do a charity sponsored unicycle ride (15 miles, Bristol to Bath). We joined them, and by the time the ride happened there were 20 people signed up. Pete pointed out that if there were 20 unicyclists able to get to Bristol, maybe there was enough interest in resurrecting the club. He booked the St Pauls Sports Academy main sports hall for an hour on a Wednesday night, and printed out some flyers to hand out at the ride.

The ride was a great success, and there was interest in the hockey, with about 12 people the first night. We booked the hall again in the same slot, and settled down with about 8 players each week.

We've now been going for nearly 12 years, in the same Wednesday night slot at St Pauls Sports Academy. Numbers go up and down, but we probably average 5-7 players at the moment.

We decided to drop the 'Freaks' name, as we were no longer connected to the Freaks brand, and thought the name could be off-putting to beginners. After a vote we chose the new team name "Severn Wheelers".

Full details at https://www.bristolunicycle.com/ for anyone interested.

Oh, and the Freaks juggling club lives on as the #Altern8 juggling club, still at the United Reformed Church Hall in Horfield :-)