Pow Wow 2011

On Sunday night we held our very first "proper" AGM, or in the language of The Magnificent AK47 Charter (our constitution), our very first Yearly Pow Wow.

Everyone was very respectful and serious about the discussions, despite the promise of being fed as soon as we finished, which perhaps helped to focus some of the debates.

In short, we have a number of tweaks to the Charter but were able to vote on accepting it in principal and were able to vote on some of the Officers.

More soon, but thank you to all who took part in a Magnificent afternoon and evening that shall live long in the legends of Blokedom around these parts.

Yuletide 2011 tracks on Soundcloud

Another excellent Workshop session on Sunday, along with all the other goings on of Photo Shoot and Pow Wow. It was amazing that with so many crammed into the pub that we managed to pick up the basic of five new pieces, some of them our trickiest yet.

Chris Samuel has very kindly put some rehearsal tracks together and these can now be found at http://soundcloud.com/the-magnificent-ak47/sets/currentpracticematerial/ towards the bottom of the list.

We have taken what he sent us for the Malpas Wassail and copied it a couple of times to lengthen the piece so that you have more of a chance to get into the Wassiling mood.

Sing your socks off

Recently received from Lisa Samuel, Mrs Chris.

"Stuck for interesting holiday plans for next year? Yourselves, and indeed your better halves, might be interested in the following:

The Sing Your Socks Off team - Chris, Dee, Fran and Elaine are at it again. We had such fun in the Czech Republic in 2010 that we've decided to go back next year.

This lovely country is accessible with convenient, cheap flights, great value food and drink and a real sense of adventure as we head eastwards into the Bohemia region.

We'll be staying in Litomysl, a beautiful city about 150kms east of Prague. In 2010, we all stayed in the YMCA Europe Training Centre, which also houses the workshop rooms. For 2012, we'll be offering a choice of accommodation, at both the YMCA and also the Aplaus Hotel - a gorgeous 4 star hotel in the town that we spent quite a lot of time in!

Find out more from http://www.singyoursocksoff.co.uk"

Sounds like fun although this would contravene the edict of only having the diary full to June next year!

Where were you? Down Under

A rather late entry for this season's T-shirt competition and an interesting one as this is an entry by proxy (the fine print in the terms and conditions has been scoured and could not find a clause that specifically excluded such an option).

Chris A posted the T-shirt to Zurich where it was picked up by his brother-in-law who was on business there. He took it back to Johannesburg where it left with his nephew, Brad, for Australia the next day (he was taking place in an international future problem solving competition which is surely pointless grandeur in itself).

On the way, they stopped off in Sydney from where these pics were taken which has a pleasing degree of moderately pointless but wistful grandeur together with outstanding iconic architectural placement. Together with being in the land of our artist forebears, this is surely a worthy entrant.

So, the scores are in

1. The Location - 4.0 (Iconic to say the least and despite no visible signage as irrefutable proof it could probably pass the "can you prove where it is test" but still unfortunately has to be docked 0.5 points. Rules is rules . . . )

2. The Pose - 3.5 (Not bad for a young'un - close so to pointless grandeur)

3. The X-Factor - 4.0 - (the spectacular views and the story of how it got there)

Making 11.5 - making the highest scoring entry from someone who has not even been in the same country as The Magnificent AK47 yet received - can you beat this?

More photos from St Georges

Remember the old days when you carefully took precious photos, winding on the film, posing, clicked on the shutter not knowing whether you had captured something worthwhile or had inadvertently got a pillar sticking out the top of someone's head? Remember how you had to then send off the photos and wait for sometimes weeks before they came back only to find they were truly rubbish?

How times have changed! Now you can see seconds after you take the photo whether it is worth keeping or not but it still often takes weeks to come back from the metaphorical processors before you can share them with the rest of the world.

Such a thing has happened with the latest batch of photos from our recent triumph at St Georges in Bristol except this time it was more getting around to the quality control and finally posting them to Flickr. Anyhow, these can now be observed in all their serious silliness at http://www.flickr.com

Calendar Photo Shoot + Workshop + Pow Wow

A busy day ahead for our valiant blokes

14:45 Muster in The White Hart

15:00 Start the photo shoot, pints in hand - Sprogs first (see below)

16:45 Finish photo shoot

17:00 Workshop with Chris

19:00 Finish workshop and get suitable refreshments

19:30 Begin Pow Wow and finish as soon as possible to start the meal along with much mingling, drinking, some singing and who knows what else

22:30 We get kicked out of the pub, and rightly so, it being a school night!

Magnificent Sprogs Photo shoot
We thought that we would like to take the opportunity to get some photos of the mini Magnificents, the Magnificent Sprogs, so please bring anyone falling into this category, ie your kids, wearing T-Shirts. There may well be some spare T-Shirts to borrow or purchase if they don't already have their own. We can take some photos of them at the beginning of the session and they can then disappear home.

Pow Wow
We thought that we should go for the following agenda

1. Pre-amble about transitioning from de facto to actual
2. Constitution - discuss and approve
3. Elect officers
4. Plans for the Group
   
5. Award of the prizes for the T-Shirt competition

Here's looking forward to a unique afternoon / evening!

3 sleeps till Pow Wow

It is now only 3 sleeps until our very first official(ish) Pow Wow.

Now we nearly have a grown up constitution we need to do some things that will pass for being semi organized, which hopefully we can just about cope with doing! We are taking advantage of the Workshop we have had scheduled for a while to combine it with a semi official photo shoot for our first calendar (!) and then hang around for an evening meal together and a chance to talk about our ethos, elect some officers and then get on with drinking, eating and hopefully a bit of impromptu singing and possibly one or two other surprises.

The plan for the day is as follows:

14:45 Muster in The White Hart

15:00 Start the photo shoot, pints in hand

16:45 Finish photo shoot

17:00 Workshop with Chris

19:00 Finish workshop and get suitable refreshments

19:30 Begin Pow Wow and finish as soon as possible to start the meal along with much drinking, some singing and who knows what else

22:30 We get kicked out of the pub, and rightly so, it being a school night!

Looking forward to an entertaining afternoon and evening. We'll report back afterwards, hopefully with the odd photo or two.