The tale begins back in December 2001 at our AGM when it was decide that we should hold a bit of a party to celebrate Huddersfield SC coming of age, it's hard to believe the club has been going for a whole 18 years. I personally joined back in 1987 left after a couple of years and rejoined back in 1998 and took over as number 1 in 1999 during which time I have tried to raise the profile of the club both locally and nationally, we now have around 30 members who regularly attend international, national and local events.

Fast forward now to the middle of 2002, the venue had already been booked - we decided to use the Irish centre as we had held our previous do there a couple of years back and it was the perfect place. Initially we had decided against having a band mainly down to cost but also who to get as there is such vast array of musical taste on the scooter, whoever you book it's bound to piss someone off cos it's not their thing, however this all changed when I was contacted by local indie / brit pop band SERF who said they would like to play at the do and for a minimal fee, mainly to get some stage time and to support the local scooter scene as they are from Huddersfield. So we had our venue, a band, one DJ (myself) but we needed a couple more jocks to mix it up a bit and give me chance to mingle, so being a cheeky tw@t I persuaded the now world famous disco Daz & Tesco of the VFM collective to do a session for us - sorted - we couldn't fail, a great venue, a great band and some great dj's. Tickets went on sale in August and at only £3 they were a steal and were selling fast. I then set about contacting various scooter dealers, clothing suppliers etc to extract raffle prizes out of them. Everyone of them gave very generously, (can I just say, please support your local dealers because if you don't the next time your scoot goes tits up they won't be there to get you back on the road. I know some parts are cheaper on the continent / internet but it's worth an extra couple of quid to get that personal service they provide. I'll get off my soap box now!!)

Everything was going perfect until Bridlington, Serf were booked to play the Friday night do, now I have seen them a couple of times previous at non scootering events and thought they were great, but it seems the general scootering public weren't too impressed with them at Brid, not sure why as I thought they did a really good set even if most of it is their own material and unknown, I think they should be applauded for doing their own stuff rather than just being a covers band, it's nice to hear some new stuff on the scene, however they went down like a lead balloon, obviously i'm getting worried, what if people don't come cos they don't like the band? It's going to be a disaster! How wrong I was, around 3 weeks prior to the do all 250 advance tickets were sold out and with complimentary tickets for members & sponsors that took the total to over 300, I was astonished but very pleased.

The day of the do arrived way too early at 8am and boy was this gunna be a long day / weekend, in my wisdom I had arranged to take Atlantic Gold to Dunstable custom show the following day, so I had to collect the hire van from Pontefract go to Huddersfield to pick up Snelly then to Sheffield to collect the scoot, back to Snelly's to load his scoots for his move to Nottingham then over to my girlfriends to pick up my record boxes, raffle prizes etc etc. Ready for the nights entertainment, time for a bath and a brush up and off to the venue for 6.15pm on arrival I found billy and a few others already unloading the DJ equipment, at least that had arrived, one less thing to worry about!! At around 7pm the band arrived to set up their equipment, however there was a problem, they had no drummer! He had injured his knee the previous day and couldn't play, suicide was a viable option at this point! But true to form the band didn't let us down, they agreed to do an acoustic set (something they had never done before) there was no alternative we couldn't let the masses down. So everything was in place a quick check of all the gear to make sure it worked and it all did. The doors were due to open at 8pm but because of demand and the availability of a few "pay on the "door" tickets people were arriving around 7.30. I did the first couple of hours on the decks playing a mix of ska, 2tone, northern and a bit of mod stuff to get the crowd warmed up and the first few beers down the neck to lubricate the feet!! The place was getting very full very quick and by the time daz & tesco arrived at 9.30 the place was packed, once they had grabbed a beer i handed over the decks to them which gave me a chance to mingle a bit. The band were due on around 10.45 so after a wicked set of all sorts from daz & tesco i gave the band a big intro to get them & the crowd up for what turned out to be a awesome set of their own stuff and a few covers including a acoustic version of "my generation" which was wicked.

After the band it was time for some presentations and the raffle, the first presentation went to our very own snelly who as mentioned before was moving to nottingham, we presented him with a silver engraved tanker and a case of lager to make sure the tankard got some good use. Then it was trophy time for best turned out and furthest travelled (details at the end). Then it was raffle time - what a disaster!! It was taking forever for people to collect prizes and due to the volume of people some couldn't hear the numbers drawn, so we decide to just chuck all the prizes onto the dance floor and let people scrap it out for themselves - it would have gone down well at twickenham!! If anyone got injured by flying scooter parts - serves you right for getting in the way!!!! After the raffle it it was back to the music and next on the decks was a guest dj by the name of jim kenny top local northern soul jock who had the dance floor packed to capacity for a good hour or so, 1am arrived at a 100mph and before we knew it the bar was closed (boo!!) - what did happen to the last 5 hours? However that wasn't the end of the fun as we still had an hour of partying left and it was my turn back on the decks and i decided it was time to get a bit silly and have a trip back in time to 80's style, with tracks like "nellie the elephant" - "wreckin crew" and the like, it was great! In no time at all it was 2am and time for the last tune of the night which it seemed fitting to play "dancing in the moonlight" which had everyone swaying, it had been a brilliant night and everyone was happy (apologies to those who's requests were missed we ran out of time) all that was left was to say thanks and goodnight to everyone. Once we'd packed all the gear away, myself snelly and jock set off for Dunstable at 2.45am - arriving at around 7am we were knackered!! But we'd had a great night with over 350 people attending the do and not a spot of bother.

Everyone at Huddersfield sc would like to say a special thanks to the following...... Daz, tesco and jim for helping with the dj'ing, serf for playing a stunning set, dave for the use of his dj equipment, my better half sharon for helping with everything and putting up with me (she deserves a wheel barrow full of medals for that alone!!!!) Also big thanks and huge respect to the following who made the night so special.... Stockport crusaders, bradford st.george, millennium, kinky pigs, shipley bulldogs, halifax commitments, halifax elite, a1 doncaster, nuneaton pacemakers, chorley scorpions, gemini sc leeds, luddites sc, leeds central, mad for it, rosa bianca, famous last words bike club, the guys gals & anyone in between who travelled from leicester, cleethorpes, shibdon, essex and everyone else who turned up that we may have forgot to mention.
A massive thanks also to the following, without who the night wouldn't have been nearly as much fun, scootering magazine, absolutely scooters, armando's scooters, pete merchant scooters, phoenix heinz scooters, srp services, psn scooters, colour works paint shop, warrior clothing, phoenix city clothing, karl russell electro platers, midas touch, the lockwood arms pub & cafe and last but not least famous last words bike club / huddersfield m.a.g. All these guys gave very generously to our raffle which just proves what a brilliant lot our / your local dealers are - support them whenever you can.
Finally, our trophy winners were - best turned out club with 36 attending - bradford st.george. Furthest travelled went to graham & janet from braintree in essex. Congratulations to all the winners and everyone who came for making it an anniversary to remember for many many years to come.
See ya all again next year.
Jason, huddersfield scooter club.