A session starting at 4.30pm is a no-go area for working people, I am afraid.  It will almost be as bad as the 3.00pm session.  The schools might take a 3.00pm session, but your 4.30pm session will have us all taking time off work on a regular basis - that might be feasible for some, but not for most of us.

No one enjoys, not even the keenest of keen curlers - not even the ones with their trousers rolled up over their knees and their left breast exposed to the elements - not even them, I repeat, no one enjoys curling on a session that ends at 11.00pm.  It is an unmitigated disaster of a session.  It is no fun.  It is ghastly.  You only do it because you have to and you know that it is for the good of the game, blah-di-blah.  Add in travelling and you don't get into the comfort of your scratcher until - well - whenever.  Late anyway.  Your plan has one session that you can't sell and one that no one wants.  I don't care how good the ice is - I can't curl at 4.30pm and I don't want to finish at 11.00pm.

I suspect that is why the Kinross people have gone for six sheets.

That said, it will be interesting for the Kinross and surrounding area curlers to see the Kinross Curling Trust Business Plan when it is finalised and published.  The Ratho Business Plan is in the public domain and anyone interested can find it at http://www.gocurling.co.uk/dyncat.cfm?catid=7347.  At the start of the document, you will find the financial projections for a six-sheet rink.  I cannot imagine that the Kinross projections will differ materially.

I am going to now come off the fence.  In an earlier posting I mentioned that Mr Montgomery was adamant that £150000 would be set aside each year to cover depreciation and interest payments.  It was not quite as high at Ratho, but there were similar figures being bandied about there to cover the interest on a significant bank loan and money would obviously have to be prudently set aside there as well for new stones, plant upgrades and the like.  That facility was not so financially exposed as the start-up cost was some £0.75M less than at Kinross and there had already been donations made to the tune of some £1/4million.  That was money in the bank (it is no longer there, by the way).

But I just don't get it.  Name me another rink in Scotland that is producing the kind of revenue stream that produces the flexibility to cover these numbers.  

I'll help you out here.  There isn't one.

And there, my friends, is the real problem.

So its a local rink, for local people.

Were you ever an ice tech in Royston Vasey?

Excellent stuff BH and just my luck that the first (and I mean the first!) person ever to make a good case for 9.45pm being a fun time to start a midweek game of curling does so in response to a post on the evils of such an event

I do think that you might be in the minority but will retire behind a suitably-sized wall to prevent being hit by further brickbats and pot-shots from other members of the Forum!

This was always in our minds. We will, however, have to see if H&S allows this! People have no idea how regulated Birtain has become, nor do they fully understand how much damage just one volunteer can do with uneven pebble. Some careful training can prevent this, but Britain is not Sweden. I have some very good friends in Sweden, and when I look at their attitude to doing things properly I'm plain jealous!

The 9 - 5 brigade we are agreed will not be able to play on one of the three peak sessions of which JM talks.  I do not know the demographic break down of the Royston Vasey curlers in Kinross.  There may very well be an adequate number of farmers (not involved in their afternoon milking, mind you!), retirees, teachers and those on flexi-time in the area whose working hours permit a quick shimmy away from the office (or wherever) at around 4.00pm to allow them to curl at 4.30.  Ah hae ma doots though!

The Murrayfield late night session finishes at 11.15 or thereabouts.  It is still a pig of a session.

Regarding the six sheet debate, the impression that I got at the meeting from Jamie Montgomerie (who seems, thus far at least, to be the driver of the project), is that he is very much in favour of the six sheet solution.  Indeed he seems to have worked out his business plan on the basis of six sheets.  I do not think he is being so much pushed into it by anyone as doing the pushing!  Maybe that's what you meant though

The dodgy-kneed Irish ex-footballer of no fixed abode catches a posible solution in one though.  I am sure that helping sweep the ice with the ice sweeper thingy, tidying up the stones and scoreboards could be activities that the H and S chappies might be persuaded to agree was OK on a voluntary basis, surely?  I do not think that he (nor indeed I for that matter) is suggesting for a minute that some unqualified twat should pebble the ice or drive the big powered Gillette.

Yours

Ketchup

Ah! SteveW is in Risk Assessments! You, sir, will be welcome in our world too. Must tell you this, when I tried to explain to a RA officer that good curling ice is not slippery, the lady did not believe me. I (wearing my working shoes as in beginner's curling shoes with two grippies) could not slide my feet apart, whereas the lady, in serious indignity, fell flat on her behind wearing ordinary half-heel shoes. Her shoes were slippery, mine were not, but the ice got the blame!

I'm not really "in" Risk Assessments, but I am regularly up to my ears in them.

I believe Aberdeen can actually accomodate 7 sheets (removing the walkways). A desirable option to have should the management need the existing assets to work a bit harder. Very much catering for the expansion of the sport as Hibby suggests.