Welcome to our November newsletter! (Which has had a slight Christmas post delay.)

This month we’re mostly focusing on the off-court activities we’ve been up to in recent weeks. There is a lot going on behind the scenes at the moment.

Before the last days of Summer were over, squash member Gerry Sims and his company Blumonkey Media shot a great drone reel of the club, which we have posted on Facebook and which will be on the landing page of our new website coming soon. Take a tour of BLT&SRC - YouTube.

2025 Members’ Opinion Survey

Click here for our report on the ratings and the comments (you'll need to log in to the members area to view). It is not a brief report - you’ll need to settle back with a cup of tea. But we wanted to handle it comprehensively and to show that every opinion matters. 170 of you (three-quarters of the responses) provided your name and we will do the draw for free 2026 membership at the AGM on Monday 2nd February (a date for your new year calendar!).

It’s in PDF so it can be viewed on any device. It’s best viewed as a slideshow on a PC or tablet.

Section 1 contains the ratings, an introduction to the report, and a suggested approach to reading Section 2 - your comments and our views (the bulk of the report).

We will use the monthly newsletter to keep many of your points front-of-mind.

While we’re talking about surveys and your feedback, we’d love to hear from you about these monthly newsletters, so we can keep them topical for you. What’s your question or subject that you’d like us to cover in a future edition?

Projects around the club

Tennis courts 1-3 have been upgraded to LED floodlighting. Planning permission for LED lighting on 6a was agreed last week and will now also be upgraded, giving us LED lights on all indoor and outdoor courts other than 6b (which has no cabling for lights). Efficient, crystal-clear lighting that comes on instantaneously!

Tennis courts 10-12 have new back-fencing and new corner-fencing by the pathway - which now has a new gate. We just need to make a couple of final tweaks to the gate.

The squash balcony has been sanded and varnished, the squash corridor has been painted and we have installed door threshold strips to courts 3 and 4 to remove the slight trip hazard. Now we need to re-hang the Squash and Racketball honours boards, which have been updated with the 2025 winners.

We’ve mended the tiling in the mens changing rooms. Not quite the same colour match, but finding imperial sized tiles these days proved very elusive.

By the end of this coming weekend an add to calendar feature in the court booking emails will have been fully rolled out. Simply click on the court time in the email and you’ll see the option.

Also, we heard your survey feedback regarding squash court cancellations and we have reduced the chargeable cancellation window from 72 hours to 48 hours, i.e. there is no charge provided you cancel a court booking no later than 48 hours beforehand; and even then there is no charge if the court is subsequently booked by someone else. For consistency we’ve done the same with ITC court bookings.

Our new website is ready to launch. However, we’re holding it back until we’re in a position to fully migrate our club management platform from the current vendor, who has put us on notice that they are retiring their service. Currently they provide our website hosting, membership management, email distribution, and most of our box leagues.

That’s why we’re in course of transitioning all box leagues for tennis, squash and racketball to alternative systems. And, as we write, we are reviewing proposals for switching membership management and email communications, which we want to have in place by the time we begin the membership renewals process in February.

What started as an apparently simple scope for the website has become a more complex and fundamental change project. That said, although our hand has been forced, it was probably about time we made this major overhaul.

Once we’ve landed the various elements, in 2026 we’ll take stock of our overall online ‘customer experience’ proposition to ensure it is as simple, thorough, and intuitive as it should be.

Upcoming social events and cafe news

Our final social event of the year is coming soon. All the way from Nashville via Hemel, Elvis will be alive and well and here to entertain you on Friday 19th December. There are still some tickets available, snap them up now from Claire or Graham.

We have upgraded to a bean-to-cup coffee machine, Graham has honed his barista skills, and coffee and cake mornings have settled into regular morning slots on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Plus various other times during the week when Graham and Claire are at the club working. Look out for the 'cafe open' sign and come on in!

Tennis

Lately we’ve noticed quite a few tennis ball container lids left on the tennis courts and in the clubhouse. Without wishing to sound like the health and safety police, over the years we’ve found out the hard way that they can have extremely sharp edges which are dangerous to both adults and children. Please do not leave them lying around, we have plenty of bins.
 

In more upbeat news, congratulations to the finalists in our handicap tournament! In particular to the winners of the main events: 

• Women’s singles: Cheryl Pitcher
• Men’s singles: Luke Ashley
• Women’s doubles: Emer Trigg and Lindsay O'Mahoney
• Men’s doubles: Luke Ashley and Ricardo Lopez
• Mixed doubles: Spencer Tring and Emer Trigg

Have you been following our National League team? Following their initial 4-0 win against Dukes Wood, we hosted Stoke Poges who had none other than Dan Evans playing for them! We still managed to give them a run for their money, though, eventually succumbing 1-3. On Sunday the team were at home against Harpenden and triumphed 4-0! 

Until next month (or later this month!), that’s all for now!

Club Council

(John Shaw, Phil Trimmer, Adam Suggett, Pete Walker, Matt Markwort, Tracey Mackey, Mark Shattock)