2026 Anniversary Dinner Report with Photographs
Our roving reporter John Aldersley presents here his comprehensive report on the recent dinner along with photographs he took during the evening….
“My wife Jill and I sat with Graham Roper, our president with Lorraine, Graham’s partner along with Sam Wilkinson, our vice president who invited colleague Adam from WDS Components. We then had Cameron Pinder seated next to Isaac Auty, Thomas Irish a student from the University of Leeds studying Medical Engineering, and Harry Soutar. Ben King, our new council member was on the table next to us, with Howard Kingswell and Fiona keeping him company. Ben commented that he really enjoyed himself and is aiming to lower the average age of the association in the years to come ! I joked it was now around 80 years on average ! The Keighley Association of Engineers (KAE) were well represented and it was great to see them at the dinner. Graham welcomed them all and mentioned the up-and-coming visit to The Steam Workshop. Also, later on in the evening Grant Hewitt of KAE spoke to Cameron. Grant was very impressed with what he has achieved so far at 21 years old.
Our Honorary Chaplain Canon Paul Maybury and wife Sarah attended. It was great to see Paul and his wife. Paul is looking forward to retirement on the 26th November, and he and Sarah will be moving into cottage in Brighouse. Graham said he was looking forward to the Church Service on the 10th May. I was pleased to see Paul was staying local and was wondering what happens when a canon retires. I hope we can stay in touch with Paul and Sarah. Their son is working with my friends in the motor vehicle department at Leeds City College (LCC), and is enjoying himself. Sarah mentioned that he been promoted. The department does great things and has really good departmental skills from the world of cars. I will endeavour to organise a visit to the campus, but as they know me they will say no ! I have a very dubious reputation and they may have been glad to get rid of me from the school of engineering !
On Ross Town’s table was Steve Gledhill who has attended most dinners over the past thirty odd years. He knows Graham through their working lives. Steve said it’s the only dinner he attends. He came over to speak to me a little later. I told him we were now looking for a new dinner secretary with Andrew Kibler stepping down after seven great years (before that Alex Rogers did a great job with the help of wife Anne). Steve said he would continue to support the dinner no matter the format. We spoke how in his (very experienced) opinion it is now very difficult to start a business and he would not do it now, Steve’s old company being Mandate Systems. Steve did say he still does some consultancy work for them.
The staff at The Manor, did a cracking job. I requested some more roast potatoes and they arrived sharpish ! One younger council member had more than me. I will not mention his name but he works on the EDM machines at Kirkstall Precision and his initials are IA as opposed to AI ! On the AI note a discussion was had about it modifying CNC programs with some success. As an old programmer I had to modify a CNC program to suit different controls by substituting bits of code. Cameron mentioned that if there was an issue with code, it would take a long time to discover, due to the immense amount of information that 5-axis machining used. Hopefully, what I call post-processed CNC code has improved over the past 8 years. Now if all this jargon is confusing the reader, just ask AI to explain it ! I am from the ‘flat earth society’ so I would not ask it to do any CNC programming as yet.”
The quiz went the same way as most years for our table. The young engineers saying I should know the answers ref. older or later than 1865, as I was around then. I used to be young is my only reply to the ageism, but I did find it funny !
Jill and I enjoyed our food and the company on our table. Thank you to Harry for bringing Thomas along. The workers are off to the Machine Tool Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham, this week 20-24th April. Ben will be looking at measuring equipment. Cameron will be looking for potential customers for his new CNC programming/prototype/proving of complex parts by setting and making the parts for customers. Sam is looking for new opportunities for WDS Components now that they have new owners.”
Here are John’s photographs….. (Captions by John.)
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