One of the good things about Social Media, as it’s known, is that you can reconnect with people you haven’t seen for years including people who you went to school with or who lived in the same street.
I belong to a Facebook group from my home town of Banbury in North Oxfordshire and some of us managed to get together recently, one Friday night, at the GF Club in the town.
Sadly Social Clubs have been in steady decline in recent years, for numerous reasons, and the GF Club is no different, although I’m told that Saturday night’s are the exception.
The GF Club was built in the late 1960’s specifically for the employees of the General Foods factory which relocated to the town from Birmingham in 1964.
Membership costs the princely sum of £10 per annum or £14 for a couple.
If you are a poor pensioner, it gets better still, with single membership £7 and £10 per couple.
The Club welcomes visitors and guests aswell as Members.
Lunches are available Monday to Saturday between 12.00 and 2.30pm in the Lounge Bar which has two T.V’s, four dartboards with electronic score boards, and a separate snooker room. The menu is a simple one but excellent value nevertheless.
Examples:Ham, Egg & Chips – £4.95, Egg & Chips £2.00, or Freshly baked baguettes £2.75 including various fillings.
Wine, Spirits, Lager and Beer is about half the price you can expect to pay in a typical Public House in the town.
Musical entertainment is on every Friday and Saturday night between 8 and 11 with the bar open until midnight.
Our Friday night get together was great. Meeting up with some people you haven’t seen for 50 years is sometimes embarrassing, due to the ravages of time having taken their toll on all of us, and you don’t immediately recognise what used to be familiar faces, but we all quickly got over that and recalled things from the past that we all shared.
The staff and members of the club were very welcoming to our small group, just as I know they will be to anyone who visits them in the future.
The GF Club is situated opposite the Castle Quay Shopping Centre in town centre and alongside the Banbury Museum and the Oxford Canal.
