MAIN » ARTICLES First TON Annual Prizegiving As I pen this article, the thought crosses my mind that I'd like to be able to say I had planned this all along. I'd like to be able to say that I went out, bought a gift and held a competition to reward the precious reading public for their time over the last 3 years. In reality, I got something for free just by complaining, and saw an easy opportunity to make people think I was a good person. By now you should know that we (theonlinenet) had a Casablanca poster to give away. A very large, wall-size poster showing the stars of the film, including Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid. As fans of Michael Curtiz's work frothed at the mouth worldwide, entries came in thick and fast through the livejournal system set up to handle the large demand. After a careful series of quantative and qualitative analysis by me and my reflection, David Randall was crowned the winner, and told of his victory over a bagel and irish coffee in the sixth form meeting room. 3 days before Christmas Day, the two original creators of TON: Robert Hendy and I, went to David's house to present him with his poster. This is what went down: 4:30pm Rob arrives at my house and rings the bell. I am close by and quickly make my way to the door where I welcome him in with opens arms - "come on in", I say, and we share a moment. 4:32pm to 4:39pm We move upstairs to TON HQ where I hand my partner the poster to examine. I then tell him not to take it out of the tube. I take the batteries out of the charger, put them in the camera and pick up the essentials. I go and find my Santa Claus hand puppet, and then we're out of the door. 4:40pm to 5:04pm We make our way towards what I can only describe as 'Helms Deep' to perform a deed I can only describe as 'Deedly'. For security's sake, we can't say what we did here, but we did it, and I took 2 pictures, one of Rob and one of me wearing the santa hand puppet. Three cheers for productivity. 5:05pm to 5:18pm Arriving in Kesgrave, we head towards Chez Randelle. We park out of sight, gather all the goods together and start the 30 metre walk to his front door. 20 metres in, I have to retreat to pick up my santa hand puppet, which is lying in the middle of the road. Wearing cowboy and adventurer hats, we stand on the doorstep and ring the bell. 5:18pm to 5:19pm Dave himself opens the door. We stand and stare at him in silence for a few seconds as he stands and stares back, mouth open. Thinking quickly, noticing we'd shocked him, I tried to break the ice by performing a musical number from the play Oliver, but I forget my lines and nobody stayed for an encore. I suggest we take things into the bedroom, and everybody seems up for it. 5:20pm to 5:30pm The ceremony itself takes place. We decide to shoot into the window, and ask Dave to take his seat on the bed. Hendy is first up to present him with his Casablanca poster - you could tell at this point that the excitement was almost unbearable. Chantal sat quietly in the background, occasionally laughing hysterically at our hats and the santa hand puppet i was holding. I gave it to Rob and he gave Dave the poster (picture above). Then it was time for the surprise gift, the icing on the cake, a custard apple (picture below)... thing: jay: dave, what was the name of that fruit we gave you? dave: no idea The pictures were taken and we all breathed a sigh of relief, it was going well. 5:31pm to 6:38pm I suggest we break out the mince pies. Dave and I have one, whilst Hendrix asks for a sandwich. This makes me feel hungry, and chose that moment to join him in his plee. We move down to the kitchen and Dave finds the last remains of a brown loaf of bread. Later we would find out a fresh loaf was sitting right behind him all along. Rob butters us up and spreads me some honey and peanut butter on a 2 inch think end-of-the-loaf bit. Mrs. Randall asks what we are doing, we say making sandwiches. After that we go back up to chill for a while, before I suggest we make our exit. We drive the lady home and then take Randolf back to his pad. The event was over, but the fires in our hearts still glowed so bright, that we had to make a trip to martlessham tesco for some shades just to look at eachother. So I came home at that point to reflect on what we'd done, what we'd accomplished, how far we'd travelled and grown as people. I thought about the green thing, I thought about the look on Dave's face when we showed at his door, when we gave him the poster, and when I first bit into my "sandwich". And I smiled. Written by Jay