It was a blustery night following a gloriously clear and bright day on 26 November in Scarborough for the BAR Yorkshire Area dinner dance.

Around 40 people braved the gale to visit the Ambassador Hotel, perched high on the Esplanade overlooking the North Sea. The guests included Mike and Jan Price: Mike used to run BARTS before his retirement; and of course Philip Kidd who also, it seemed, brought most of his staff for a well earned knees-up.

The event was well organised by Graham Puddephatt of Reason Global insurance who is also the Yorkshire Area Secretary, and the Area Chairman, Michael Andrews from Pickfords.

After dinner and before the dancing started the guest speaker Steve Jordan, editor of The Mover and fellow Yorkshireman, dug up a few memories of days on the road as a removals salesman, and explained a little of the background to the birth of The Mover in April this year. Steve said that he had been in the moving business since 1974, had done every job at his old company, Avalon Overseas, including packing, portering, driving vans and fork lifts, making cases and, of course, all the office-based tasks.  He had also worked with BAR, both paid and unpaid, for around 30 years including being the Chairman of the Freight Negotiation Committee at the birth of the MTC. 

Steve had left Avalon in 1992 after its sale to Trans Euro and had been working as a writer ever since.  During that time he had been handling public relations and communications for BAR since Colin Quarrington’s retirement some years ago. When he was offered the job as editor of the Removals & Storage magazine in 2005 he saw it as a great honour and he felt “like a square peg in a square hole”. His writing experience and 30-odd years in the moving business made him uniquely qualified to be the custodian of the ‘old friend’ of the industry.

Unfortunately in recent years he felt that BAR was destroying the magazine by overly restricting its content and distribution and insisting on including far too much BAR advertising within its pages to the point that, he felt, some people had stopped reading the magazine completely.  These matters of professional principle, plus commercial considerations, had made his position untenable be the end of 2010. 

“When I started The Mover, I wondered if people would think of me as a traitor,” he said.  “But it doesn’t seem that I needed to worry.  People have been very supportive.  I owe a particular debt to the people who booked advertising in issues one and two.  The magazine didn’t exist when they made their decision.  That vote of confidence was quite humbling and gave all of us at The Mover tremendous encouragement. I’d like to take this opportunity of thanking everyone who has supported us during our first year.”

Steve closed by encouraging everyone to read the new magazine and to contribute to it with their own stories and observations of the industry.  “It’s a magazine for all of you,” he said.  “Please don’t be afraid to use it.”

The evening concluded with a raffle, that helped cover the cost of the disco, which played until the early hours.