Conventions/Assemblies in England

ScottyRex

Been a while since I did this......so here goes.....

Does anyone remember Haysbridge, Crystal Palace, Twickenham, Dorking from the 80's/90's.........so many memories there. The 5p lunch vouchers, the aroma of bacon rolls and hot doughnuts at twickenham, the smell of coffee as 50,000 odd opened their thermos flasks at lunchtime. Walking around endless laps of the perimeter of the stadium at break times, watching the airplanes flying low over Twickenham stadium en route to Heathrow.

Cinema style seats at Dorking Assembly Hall, the baptismal pool built into the stage, flapping my hands in the water and getting told off. DAH being bulldozed and turned into an NCP carpark. We then moved to a great building called Haysbridge in Surrey. A big Watchtower on the roof! Fantastic meals at lunchtime........ Everything seemed alright in them days with my rose coloured glasses on..........lol.

Would love to hear from anyone who too remembers this...........

fluke

Hey scotty....

I had my first cuddle at the age of 8 down in the newly planted trees at the back and down the bottom of hayesbridge... Otherwise known as 'gods' stone', though we weren't allowed tro say that...

Oh, I remember it now, the black velvit of her dress, with green trim... MMMMMMM, we where goin to get married you know... lol

I was 8 and she was 6, would have been great too... :)

Twickingham... I used to go to twickenham, being from Hayes congregation and all... The best thing about hayes was when they installed the new escellators, they where huge...

I remember the old stadium wings, and the Rainbow platform.... The end prayer went on for ages....

Then there was the big bible platform, wow... the memories....

ScottyRex

The platforms at the conventions used to be HUGE! or maybe I was just smaller. Was the rainbow one from 1986......"Divine Peace" DC....?

fluke

Yh I geuss so... I would have been 4 yrs old... It's the first one I remember...

I cant remember many more of the platform designs, but they stopped after a while...

One trend that came in was the use of binoculars, you used to look around for others with them and see if they were watching you too... Then wave... lol

xbro

Was the rainbow one from 1986......"Divine Peace" DC....?

i remember that one! i only went to dorking twice,i too remember the seats,i used to go on my own as my mother couldnt use the coach laid on as she was a smoker even though she wouldnt have smoked all day!

i remember the planes at twickenham broke the boredom. i remember when we had the bomb scare at southampton dc,it was held in the 'dell' footbal club stadium.

i remember the 5p tokens and the sweet peaches.

i used to envy the families on the open steps at the stadiums ,it was like a picknic. one year a brother put up a fishing umbrella for his family when it rained and was critisized for doing so as fishing was a blood sport and not allowed!

i remember as a child the boredom of siting for 3 days in a hard stadium seat,as i became a teen the boredom was eleviated some by seeing all those pretty sisters.....

we once had a circuit assembly at a seaside caravan resort, bracklesham bay i think it was, nice place bad company!

i have photo's somewhere of me and mates at the dc's ille lookem out.

wobble

I never went to Dorking, (I left that to Dorks) did all the others though.

One I remember was Plymouth ,years ago, there was an air show going on, and all sorts of weird flying craft were going right over the Argyll stadium,

and of course ,everybody was wathching them, and pointing them out to eachother and "oohing and aahing".

So the pompous Elders in charge of the DA sent a request to the organisers not to overfly the stadium.

They got the reply "We will fly where we damn well like, and anyway we are closer to God than you are " !

Oh how we laughed ! (at the Elders)

Love

Wobble

wobble

The other great venue for us in Kent and Sussex was Camber Sands holiday camp, memories Nelly136 and Highdose ? (now Nodose, well done)

Loads of us used to go down the pub, the Camber Castle, so the officious a**h*les like the C.O of the time and creepy Vic White would lock the gates well early and reproach anyone coming back from the pub.

Of course we all knew of other ways to get back in while they stood like Nazi guards at a concentration camp only catching the unwary.

One night ,three or four of us brazened it out ,walked up to the locked gate, demanded they not be so silly and open it immediately,they did, with a reluctant air,but their power was taken then , Tee Hee.

Love

Wobble

nugget

Ohhh Yes!!! I helped out when they were building Hayesbridge in 1985. Many fond memories of Dorking as a lad. I was on the sounbd team at Twickers, spent most of my time checking speakers in the tents in the car park. I used to get back home with black feet from all the charcoal stuff they had on that car park. Never went to crystal palace.

My favourite all time venue was the "Little Canada" holiday camp at Wooton on the Isle of wight, in the mid 70's. Us kids would sometimes bunk sessions to play around the site.

cantleave

Above post by Cantleave NOT nugget.

anglise

Got baptized at Camber about 1982 ish!!

Shame when they aquired Hayes Bridge as the atmosphere was never the same.

Went up for several w/end stints when HB was first refurbished to become the Ass Hall and then regularly did maintenance as other half is an engineer and so was useful!! Didnt know they had put in escalators though - when was that?

Wobble - Knew a Vic White wonder if it was the same one as you remember (had a VERY red complexion)?

Only did Twickers once - very big , then rebelled and went to Norwich, Plymouth or Cardiff and combined with main holiday (too sad).

Our cong was assigned to Crystal Palace and then Brighton.

Anglise

Conventions/Assemblies in England

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