SCARA Annual Reunion Lunch 2024 Report

Another fabulous gathering!  As someone said afterwards, we aren't sure how the stars managed to align, but the day's threatened tube strike was called off, we had beautiful November sunshine and a great turnout!

This was the 18th Annual SCARA Reunion Lunch and in the opinion of many, the best one yet.  100 had booked and inevitably not all could make it, but 91 came through the door on the day.  It was great to see a number of people for whom this was the first reunion lunch, and a good number of those had travelled some distance to join us (first prize for that one went to Mark Yong who was over from Hong Kong, but we were also really pleased to welcome those who had come over to London for the event from  Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands).

The venue this year was again the hall at International Students House near Great Portland Underground Station in London.  Name badges were ready, flags were up, the revolving slide show as running (a new feature for 2024) and the memorabilia stand was stocked ready for the first arrivals from 11am. 

Richard described his career with the company which had started in 1994 and ran through to 2006.  He then spent 17 years as the Director of the Tank Museum in Bovington before moving to be Executive Director at Gresham College in central London.    Richard gave us a comparison of his experiences working in the global shipping industry, the military heritage sector and then education, before telling us a number of highly amusing observations about cavalry forces around the world!

After Richard, SCARA President Robert Woods said a few words before David again took centre stage.  He spoke about our challenge for 2025, marking SCARA's 20th birthday by getting 200 attendees to the next annual reunion lunch!  

Following the raffle draw, we had an unplanned 'quiz', David setting the task of naming everyone in a photograph taken in Dubai in the mid-1980s (see right - answers at the bottom of this web page!)