"It's the Most Wonderful time of the Year!"

Well, it's that time of the year again! I am reminded that this time last year the Christmas Blog was written by our guest correspondent, "Shining Star". It seems a fitting time to think of a shining star. A recent Christmas card received, shown above, featured one as you can see. It also reminded me of a verse which says, "When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy", which in turn reminded me of a cheesy, but fun, song that I heard sung recently. There is a clip of it at the end of this item. Be warned though, it is very catchy! My hope for all of our members, and readers of this blog is that you too will be able to rejoice with exceedingly great joy this Christmastime.

What of the club and table tennis? Well, we are just about half way through the season (actually the 1st week of January sees the halfway point of the Liverpool League schedule). On the League front, our 1st team are just about holding their own in Division 1, in Division 2 we hold top and bottom spot! Both of our teams in Division 3 are doing OK, both in the top half of the Division. In Division 4 we have struggled a little, and here we remember Keith Dudley as he comes to terms with the loss of partner Mary (see separate News Story). In Division 5 we occupy the two bottom spots in the division, but our teams are competing and enjoying their matches. We also have juniors playing in the L&DTTL Junior Development Division alongside juniors from Anfield coaching and Crosby High and doing very well in both divisions. On the daytime social front 2017 has been a fantastic year with a number of new members and a really great atmosphere. Nearly every day there is now social play during the daytime with coaching on Friday's with Keith Williams, and junior coaching on Monday's with Ian & Graham.

It has also been a good year on the social scene, and by the time you read this we will have enjoyed our Christmas social. And looking forward to the final social of the year on Wednesday 20 December at midday at Marine.

Looking forward we now need to work in earnest towards a new club room; there are exciting plans for this and we should be able to share more details early in the New Year, in the meantime there is an urgent need for fund raising to get the project off the ground.

All in all it has been a full season so far, despite the Club Secretary having to take a little bit of a back seat for a few weeks....! It's a good job we have a great team of volunteers running the club!

PS: don't forget to check out all of the News Stories on our website as well as items on our Facebook page. Comments, feedback and ideas always welcome

All that remains for now, is for me to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year. Look forward to catching up with you all again in 2018! And below is my Christmas card to you all, wishing you all exceedingly great joy.