I saw their first London gig, back when Pretty Hate Machine was breaking, and was sorely disappointed, as I was expecting something similar to Depeche Mode, and got a wall of noise and 47 smashed guitars instead, I guess that if I'd been told what to expect, and I didn't have a top floor 'seat round a table' position to view it from, I'd have had a whale of a time. I've been a bit wary since, especially as I have tinnitus from too much loud music back in the day, and it can take me weeks to recover all of my hearing after even a modestly loud gig (I'm not expecting my ears to get over the Notts munch until the weekend, for example). The clincher that made me decide not to go this time was the drummer admitting they won't be playing 'the perfect drug' because it would probably break his arms :-)
mmm Trent Reznor!
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Mr_D_and_HotTart
Over 90 days ago
Bisexual Male, 57
Bisexual Female, 62
0 miles · Hereford and Worcester
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Quote by ChairmanMiaow
my moral standing is lying down
I'll name that song in one!
Back to the topic... before leaping to conclusions, perhaps you should consider that a married person can have the permission of their spouse to play around, especially on this site! Is it morally wrong if (for example) she's sent him out to get a bj and gets off on knowing how naughty he is? While I can accept that some people believe its still sinful to commit adultery even if everyone concerned gives their permission, I find it hard to believe that the original poster is in that category!
Oh dear, this thread has all gone a bit retro, hasn't it? Current rock-ish favourite is Nine Inch Nails "With Teeth", an absolute classic imho. Trent has been pulling in different directions his whole career, synth pop on Pretty Hate Machine, punk on Broken/Fixed, noise on The Downward Spiral, dreamlike states on The Fragile, and "With Teeth" is the album where is all comes together as a consistent, compelling vision.
Oh, and veering off a bit, the new Depeche Mode singe "Precious" is a long-overdue return to form, which cheers me up no end. Now all we need is for that workshy git Eldritch to finish a Sisters album
Oh, and veering off a bit, the new Depeche Mode singe "Precious" is a long-overdue return to form, which cheers me up no end. Now all we need is for that workshy git Eldritch to finish a Sisters album
Thanks to Sarah and all the cast and crew for one of the most enjoyable munches I've ever been to.
Yet again, despite strenuous efforts to circulate, I didn't manage to say hi to half the people I wanted to, partly because the music was deafening. Realising I was in danger of becoming one of the old fogies who want the music turned down I decided to flail about wildly on the dancefloor instread. I apologise to all those with broken limbs/spilled drinks etc.
I propose that all future munch venues should have a staircase, not just because of the joys of standing at the top cleavage spotting, but also because for variation, you can stand at the bottom stocking-top spotting!
I'm sure we all remember when we were newbies, wondering timidly what sort of thing we'd got ourselves into and how we'd cope with these scary crazy outgoing uninhibited people - so I'd like to thank Smoking Muff for single hanededly reducing me to the same state of wondering what we'd got into and how we'd cope with such a crazy outgoing person in our midst, I can't believe this was your first munch!
Good to see other new people fitting right in, and so many familiar happy faces, and congratulations to all on a wild night that was (as far as I saw) completely unmarred by incidents, acrimony or inappropriateness.
Lastly, I'm very glad someone else mentioned the sudden appearence of Smurfs post-munch, I was starting to wonder if it was just me that saw them everywhere
Yet again, despite strenuous efforts to circulate, I didn't manage to say hi to half the people I wanted to, partly because the music was deafening. Realising I was in danger of becoming one of the old fogies who want the music turned down I decided to flail about wildly on the dancefloor instread. I apologise to all those with broken limbs/spilled drinks etc.
I propose that all future munch venues should have a staircase, not just because of the joys of standing at the top cleavage spotting, but also because for variation, you can stand at the bottom stocking-top spotting!
I'm sure we all remember when we were newbies, wondering timidly what sort of thing we'd got ourselves into and how we'd cope with these scary crazy outgoing uninhibited people - so I'd like to thank Smoking Muff for single hanededly reducing me to the same state of wondering what we'd got into and how we'd cope with such a crazy outgoing person in our midst, I can't believe this was your first munch!
Good to see other new people fitting right in, and so many familiar happy faces, and congratulations to all on a wild night that was (as far as I saw) completely unmarred by incidents, acrimony or inappropriateness.
Lastly, I'm very glad someone else mentioned the sudden appearence of Smurfs post-munch, I was starting to wonder if it was just me that saw them everywhere
:x :xMuch as I applaud the sentiment, these statistics are unfortunately fairly meaningless. Dying 'prematurely' is simply not a very good way of comparing these factors.
A large number of smoking-related deaths are in very old people, and we don't know if these statistics are including people who are (for example) weakened by lung cancer but actually die of something else, and we don't know how they compilers of these numbers are counting people who die through things that smoking gives you a greatly increased risk of - are they all included even if smoking is not necessarily the prime cause of death, or are the figures reduced by the number of people who would have died from these things anyway without smoking? Taking the current thoughts on the damage done by smoking and passive smoking to the logial conclusion, surely everyone who dies of old age does so slightly 'prematurely' because they have been exposed to it?
While the death of an elderly relative is certainly sad, I don't feel it's statistically valid to equate someone who had their natural lifespan reduced by a few months (or perhaps even days) with someone cut down in their prime by one of the other causes.
A large number of smoking-related deaths are in very old people, and we don't know if these statistics are including people who are (for example) weakened by lung cancer but actually die of something else, and we don't know how they compilers of these numbers are counting people who die through things that smoking gives you a greatly increased risk of - are they all included even if smoking is not necessarily the prime cause of death, or are the figures reduced by the number of people who would have died from these things anyway without smoking? Taking the current thoughts on the damage done by smoking and passive smoking to the logial conclusion, surely everyone who dies of old age does so slightly 'prematurely' because they have been exposed to it?
While the death of an elderly relative is certainly sad, I don't feel it's statistically valid to equate someone who had their natural lifespan reduced by a few months (or perhaps even days) with someone cut down in their prime by one of the other causes.
:mrgreen:Here's me paying £360 a year fully comp for a mid-engined sport car 
I do make a distinction between people with a love for fast cars (like cossies) and the tea-tray and bucket-sized exhaust brigade who think a hundred-weight of filler and an airscoop that looks like darth vader has melted over the front of their car will make it go faster!
I do make a distinction between people with a love for fast cars (like cossies) and the tea-tray and bucket-sized exhaust brigade who think a hundred-weight of filler and an airscoop that looks like darth vader has melted over the front of their car will make it go faster!
Quote by blonde
...I really do think you are beating yourself up for nothing !!! It was a really good night ! and £3 £4 £5 each would have made no difference to any of us I am sure........... Steve was paying anyway............ lol
Actually, I was trying to beat up people who confirmed but didn't turn up!
I'm glad you had a good night, and I think we all did, but I don't think the event went as well as the first one, simply because the numbers were much lower.
Last time we asked for a £3 donation on the door, held a raffle, and someone also passed a pint glass round for Alex the DJ. We ended up making a donation of over £200 to charity. Some people thought this was all too much fundraising, and the munch rules were amended to reflect this shortly after.
Quote by blonde
I think you have to expect a number of people to not turn up....... its what some people do unfortuneately........ maybe we should start to keep a record of how many people confirm then dont attend....... so that when u organise something u know the rough percentage of non attendees....... then u can take that into account when covering the costs !!
I realise we have to expect a certain level of no-shows, but we've seen this level go up from 20% to 50% recently. I simply think it's gone too far, which is why I'm kicking up a fuss!
Quote by blonde
It was a great night and U really should have asked for a quid more from everyone !!!!
If you had money left over...... it could have been held over until the next do !
Currently the rules forbid asking for money more than once, and holding funds over til the next do opens up a while new can of worms (as well as forcing the organiser of a munch to keep on running then forever!). But I think the important thing here is to fix the core problem of people not turning up rather than fixing the symptoms.
Quote by Jas-Tim
As I've never organised a munch and am only aware of venues in my,or my parents area, this is a genuine question.
Is it not possible to get venues where there is no charge, or a lot cheaper charge?
Good point. We spent quite a while looking at venues, and the place we ended up with wasn't the cheapest but we decided that the cost was well worth it for the facilities provided. We had quite a long list of criteria that we wanted our venue to have, and we would have had to compromise if we wanted a cheaper option. Making a loss is only a symptom of us not getting people turning up, it's not the problem itself. We could have run a free event, but in a worse venue, but I think the expense was well worth it.
For the record, here's a list of what we were looking for:
A big room that we had exclusive use of
A bar in the room
A reasonably 'posh' venue
Allowing us to use our own DJ
Allowing us to bring our own buffet
Plenty of free car parking
Easy to get to from the M25
Good public transport
Close to a reasonably large hotel
Good bar food
Not too expensive to hire room
Good selection of reasonably priced (for this part of the world!) non-own-brand drinks
We ended up compromising on the buffet (theirs or nothing, a head payable in advance) because the bar food was so good, and on public transport (there is none!) because the venue scored so highly on all the other points.
Quote by blonde
Babe,
I hear what you are saying...... and agree completely....... that no-one should have been out of pocket !............ I dont understand why u didnt just ask everyone for a quid as they left.......... I am sure no-one would have objected !!l
I did think about that, but the way I look at it is that I was promising people a bigger, better, more swinger-packed event that I was actually able to deliver, so it would be wrong of me to ask for more money. I feel a munch organiser shouldn't be charging the people who did come for the problem with people who didn't. This isn't a money problem for me, it's a venue size and planning issue.
As for the specific problems with this event, I really don't want to go over them in this thread, but suffice to say we didn't see a particular rise in cancellations around that time, and the cancellation/not turning up problem seems to be affecting many events on SH.
Quote by Shikukai
...Perhaps make a point in the next Munch sticky the cost will be between £2 to £3. Charge £2 on the door and if a loss has been made then ask for the additional (Going on your pervious numbers) I cant see many people having a problem with that as long as it was stated on the original post?...
I do apologise if this doesn't make sense or isn't possible to implement, as I simply dont know the rules to arranging a Munch, that and the fact that we are new to the forum also.
Well, I considering how drunk most people were by the end of the munch, and how messy it was sorting out change for a whole number of pounds when they were coming in sober...
I think just stucking a bucket out there and taking it away again when it's full enough might work better than trying to give out up to 112 lots of 13p change from a quid all at once, but what I'd ideally like to happen is simply for more people to turn up. It would have been a much better night if we had over 100, I'm feeling bad that some people came a very long way to what should have been a very big event and ended up at a medium to small one.
The rules to organising a munch are here:
http://www.swingingheaven.co.uk/terminology/munch.html
I strongly recommend giving it a go, it's a very rewarding job!
Quote by Shikukai
Thanks for pointing out the faults in my previous post as well
Faults? Not at all, thanks for jumping in and discussing, sorry if my reply came over as a telling off!
Quote by fabio grooverider
it is a very tricky subject.......
as the organsor of the last north east munch, and the next one i take the view that i am fully prepared to underwrite all the costs regardless... i get as much out of organising and the finished product as everyone else.... i didn't charge for the last one and i won't charge for this one, i have budgeted for everything and i know i can afford to do it... although i know that a lot of people probably could not
I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I went into this event knowing that if noone turned up I'd be severely out of pocket, and at the end of the day I ended up paying less than I've spent on petrol to get to other munches, but I suspect that this issue is enough to put others off organising munches, and it's certainly put me off running an event any closer to central London, where room hire would be pricier. As it stands, we couldn't have used the venue we did have if we were paying for their DJ or having a buffet. Other venues we looked at wanted up to £1500 for a suitable room, and up to £15 a head for a buffet meal!
Quote by fabio grooverider
... i know that for the wigan mini munch... so many people wanted to go that they changed the venue and got a bigger one, only for so many people to pull out/no show that the original venue would have been big enough
Exactly. This trend is why I'm sticking my hand in the air now and saying 'we have a problem'.
Quote by Shikukai
Has there been a pattern to who says they will attend and who's says they will not?
Perhaps newbies, get the gitters at the last moment and pull out?, Something like that.
There isn't really a pattern at all. Nervous newbies are slightly less likely to attend, but the whole point of munches is for newbies to have a way of meeting the regulars in an unpressured environment, and to see if they 'fit in'. It's easy to watch the regulars having a laugh in a pub and lose track of the reason for it all, but looking back on the events I've been involved in, the thing I'm most proud of is the way some new people arrive nervous and shy and leave grinning from ear to ear having found a crowd of like-minded (or even lick minded as I originally mistyped that!) they are glad to 'belong to'.
Quote by Shikukai
How about having a standby list as well as your primary list? Your Primary list would consist of your regular attendees that are likely to always show and your standby list could be of Newbies couples/singles and pervious people that have repeatedly not shown or pulled out.
We already do something very similar to this, just to filter out the sort of newbies that disappear from the site after a brief flurry of posts. I know I would not be happy to make our definition of how much of an 'active site member' you must be to get an invite any stricter, since I know we would have lost some great people who only just qualified with the limit we currently set.
Quote by Shikukai
That way when a primary list person has to cancel, a suitable secondary person could be selected on the primary requirement (a couple for a couple or a single for a single)
This would actually be against the munch rules. We must treat couples/single females/single males in exactly the same way, in order to be fair.
Quote by Shikukai
Also I think you've gonna always have no-show's.. Maybe tell people that the limit of the hall etc is 150 when in fact its actually 125 just to cover sum costs... This way you are allowing for the no-shows... Though that does pose a problem if they all turn up? But most venues wont have to much of a problem with a few extra people as long as you dont pack'em out...and abuse the venue.
Luckily our venue would have increased the space we had if we needed more, so we did not have a problem with an upper limit, but I can see this is already a problem for other organisers.
Quote by Shikukai
Also increase the entrance fee by at least 50 pence, £5 a couple is very reasonable
With hindsight, we should have done this, it would actually have been 50p a head less than the first Essex Munch, but if we had 112 people turn up, we would have ended up with over £100 profit. The munch rules wisely prohibit making money from munches, even if profits are subsequently donated to a worthy charity. Maybe we need some system for dealing with this eventuality?
Continuing a tradition started with the first Essex Munch, here is a detailed breakdown of the finances for the second Essex Munch.
When we sent the venue details PM, we had 112 people on the guest list. Since this Munch was not intended to make a profit for charity, and we had around 90% of people on the PM list attend last time, we decided to reduce the suggested door contribution from £3 to £2. This would allow us to cover our costs and surprise our DJ Alex (who was donating his services free of charge) with a few bob to cover his equipment and travel.
We had a total of 33 cancellations in the 2 weeks after the PM was sent out, leaving us with 79 attendees, which would have brought us close to breaking even on the event, however, 21 people who had confirmed did not attend, leaving us with just 56 guests on the night.
Here are the final figures:
EXPENDITURE
Room hire
Badges/badge holders (some left over from previous munch, rest bought)
DJ: (Alex of AlexClaireCameron from Swinging Heaven worked for free)
Bouncers/door staff: (thanks to everyone who took a turn)
Total outgoings:
INCOME
Door takings (56 attendees, suggested donation £2 per head, thanks to those who gave extra):
LOSS
I'd like to thank everyone who attended and made is such a great night, and specifically Marcuso for offering to organise a whip-round to cover the loss, but as munch organiser I felt I would be doing the SH community a favour if I bit the bullet and used the fact that the event made an unexpected loss as a discussion-starter.
While I realise that many people have genuine reasons for having to cancel, and am very grateful to those on the list to wrote to explain and wish us well, I feel that we have a serious problem with the number of cancellations that the community should talk about.
There seems to be a trend of 'put your name down for everything and cancel later' emerging. I'm not sure what the solution is, and I'm willing to admit that the tendency of lists to close long before the event in question might be at least a partial cause of the problem, but I think it needs discussion, before someone makes a much larger unexpected loss, or organisers start to oversubscribe venues to ensure a reasonable number of people actually turn up. Over to you...
When we sent the venue details PM, we had 112 people on the guest list. Since this Munch was not intended to make a profit for charity, and we had around 90% of people on the PM list attend last time, we decided to reduce the suggested door contribution from £3 to £2. This would allow us to cover our costs and surprise our DJ Alex (who was donating his services free of charge) with a few bob to cover his equipment and travel.
We had a total of 33 cancellations in the 2 weeks after the PM was sent out, leaving us with 79 attendees, which would have brought us close to breaking even on the event, however, 21 people who had confirmed did not attend, leaving us with just 56 guests on the night.
Here are the final figures:
EXPENDITURE
Room hire
Badges/badge holders (some left over from previous munch, rest bought)
DJ: (Alex of AlexClaireCameron from Swinging Heaven worked for free)
Bouncers/door staff: (thanks to everyone who took a turn)
Total outgoings:
INCOME
Door takings (56 attendees, suggested donation £2 per head, thanks to those who gave extra):
LOSS
I'd like to thank everyone who attended and made is such a great night, and specifically Marcuso for offering to organise a whip-round to cover the loss, but as munch organiser I felt I would be doing the SH community a favour if I bit the bullet and used the fact that the event made an unexpected loss as a discussion-starter.
While I realise that many people have genuine reasons for having to cancel, and am very grateful to those on the list to wrote to explain and wish us well, I feel that we have a serious problem with the number of cancellations that the community should talk about.
There seems to be a trend of 'put your name down for everything and cancel later' emerging. I'm not sure what the solution is, and I'm willing to admit that the tendency of lists to close long before the event in question might be at least a partial cause of the problem, but I think it needs discussion, before someone makes a much larger unexpected loss, or organisers start to oversubscribe venues to ensure a reasonable number of people actually turn up. Over to you...
Just to clear up a few points, and hopefully put everyone's mind at rest.
I'd like to apologise to MikeC for losing his request to go back on the list, I've suddenly had to look after over 100 confirmations, cancellations, reapplications and so on. I added MikeC back to my list of people who have confirmed their attendance, but didn't tell hm I'd done it, or realise that he'd not had the venue details. You have a PM, Mike!
I have sent Wishmaster the venue details too, in case he decides that he would still like to attend.
If there is anyone else who has an issue about attendance, hasn't had a PM with the details but believes they are or should be on the list, please PM me and I'll do my best to sort things out.
I'd like to apologise to MikeC for losing his request to go back on the list, I've suddenly had to look after over 100 confirmations, cancellations, reapplications and so on. I added MikeC back to my list of people who have confirmed their attendance, but didn't tell hm I'd done it, or realise that he'd not had the venue details. You have a PM, Mike!
I have sent Wishmaster the venue details too, in case he decides that he would still like to attend.
If there is anyone else who has an issue about attendance, hasn't had a PM with the details but believes they are or should be on the list, please PM me and I'll do my best to sort things out.
Sorry to be the bringer of bad tidings folks, but the list for this event closed quite a long time ago.
As the "What is a Munch" page says:
"A Munch is open to all - couples, singles, Gay, Bi, CDs, etc., there are no limits. The exception to this is the brand new newbie, i.e. those who have just joined the site or have not been an active participant. This is only to prevent gawpers, journalists and those who are just TOO curious. Remember, if you are keen to attend a Munch and meet other swingers, but are considered too new for this one, join in and keep posting because there'll be another Munch coming along shortly."
So, If you haven't had the PM that went round last week with details, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the next event.
As the "What is a Munch" page says:
"A Munch is open to all - couples, singles, Gay, Bi, CDs, etc., there are no limits. The exception to this is the brand new newbie, i.e. those who have just joined the site or have not been an active participant. This is only to prevent gawpers, journalists and those who are just TOO curious. Remember, if you are keen to attend a Munch and meet other swingers, but are considered too new for this one, join in and keep posting because there'll be another Munch coming along shortly."
So, If you haven't had the PM that went round last week with details, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the next event.
