Swallows and Amazons - 80th anniversary of publication

Phil Ragan has reminded us on Tarboard that it will be the 80th anniversary of the publication of Swallows and Amazons, on 21 July. It would be great to mark this on the day in some way, either with a series of events around the world and/or a gathering on Wild Cat Island. (I'd be interested in setting up my replica Swallows campsite there again). But there may be other ideas, thoughts  or suggestions around, or indeed plans well-laid already.

I do remember that TARS celebrated the 75th anniversary at Abbot Hall. There was also talk of a poster being drawn up, Geraint and I prepared some roughs of ideas for this.

I have a further thought to mark the eighty years of the book, and indeed twenty years of TARS: to balance the literary and the activity sides of TARS (and it's a strength within TARS to have both aspects covered), why not use some of the £50k in the TARS reserves to buy a first edition of the book, and at the same time to buy the Swallow from the film that is up for sale. I don't know of any other plans for using this money, and I doubt there will be any other artifacts for sale, nor unknown books.

Rob

Whatever the merits of Rob's spirited ideas for this July, he is not correct in stating that the 'TARS reserves' amount to £50K, and I wish he would stop saying this. They do not. I think he is confusing it with the total of net current assets. This total includes asset values (Cochy, Library etc), the Stall stock, debtors, investments, and various operating funds held by TARS organising bodies. These are not 'reserves'. Nor is the amount (large) budgeted for this year's printing and publication and mailing costs. TARS has a reserve, far smaller than £50K, and yes, it might well be possible for some of this to be allocated to a particular project, including the purchase of a small boat, but it is utterly wrong to imply that TARS has £50K to spend - would that it had !