Saturday 22nd June 2024, 9am-9pm, Ottershaw in Surrey.
It’s the final week, with our BBQ meet happening this Saturday, 22nd June 2024. Doors open at 9am, and close at 9pm (or a little sooner if everyone decides to go to the pub). We are looking forward to a brilliant day of Amiga fun. Even the weather is threatening to behave itself once again!
Key Information
- When: Saturday 22nd June 2024
- Where: Ottershaw Village Hall, Brox Road,
Ottershaw, Surrey, KT16 0HG - Time: 9am-9pm
- Cost: £14-16 per person
(price includes BBQ lunch, the famous Kickstart cake, snacks and soft drinks throughout the day) - Ticket Link: https://kickstartamigagroup.sumupstore.com/
The annual barbecue is a Kickstart tradition (see above, where you can see a much slimmer/younger/less grey-haired version of me at the grill and our Life President Rob Gilbert getting stuck into a burger back in 2000). We’ve moved this meet to a Saturday to make it easier for people to stay over for the night, have a drink etc. and we have some top-notch food lined up for the grill. I still have the apron; it will be making an appearance!
Kickstart 3 will still be a regular Kickstart meet-up, with all the usual fun and games (we might finally get one of those gaming competitions going on the big projector screen, you never know). The BBQ will be serving up in the garden outside the Runnymede Room from lunchtime until everyone is full or we run out of food, whichever comes first.
We’ll be doing good quality burgers, sausages and steaks, as well as vegetarian options, salad and other stuff. You are more than welcome to bring your own beer and/or wine, but please drink responsibly.
If you have dietary requirements (e.g, if you are a vegetarian, vegan or need Gluten Free buns). Please get in touch no later than 12noon on Thursday June 20th 2024. We’ll do our best to accommodate your needs, but we will be unable to do anything with requests received after this cut-off.
At the time of writing, we have one table place left (we managed to squeeze one more in), but non-table tickets are still available until 12noon on Thursday. Do please spread the word if you know anyone who would like to join us for the day.
RetroPassion at Kickstart 3
We are excited to welcome RetroPassion, who will be with us for the June meet and bringing a variety of their Amiga products for sale. There will be special deals on offer for attendees, and it’s a great chance to get in touch with them beforehand to make sure they bring the item or items you are after.
RetroPassion recently began stocking a wide range of the highly desired products from Individual Computing (saving you the pain of customs duties and long delays when ordering directly), including the Indivision AGA Mk3 Scandoubler, ACA accelerators and much more. Visit their web site for more details of everything they offer, including their recapping services (which all of my Amigas have benefitted from).
Getting To The Venue
Driving: Ottershaw Village Hall is located roughly a five minute drive from Junction 11 of the M25, making it easy to reach from most motorways heading towards London.
Public Transport: The nearest train station is Chertsey. It is 2.3 miles from the venue and an inexpensive taxi ride to Ottershaw Village Hall.
No ULEZ Charges: Just a reminder, London’s Communist Mayor Khan hates Amigas and Amiga owners. He was clearly an Atari ST owner back in the day! Despite his best efforts, he won’t be ruining our day with his hateful anti-Amiga ULEZ tax, which is now in operation across all of London and forcing motorists to pay £12.50 a day to drive perfectly good cars into or around parts of London that have no air pollution issues.
Ottershaw Village Hall is located OUTSIDE the expanded London ULEZ zone, so if your car is not ULEZ compliant, and you are already outside of the London boundary, you won’t have to pay the ULEZ charge to come to Kickstart by car. The M25 is also outside the ULEZ zone, so it’s safe to use to go around the edge of London and avoid the charge.
Parking: There is a large, free car park directly opposite the hall, called the Murray Road Car Park (see map below). We strongly encourage you to park there.
It is a Saturday so there are some parking restrictions on the local roads around the hall, so check before you park. Please do not park in the car park of the Miller and Carter Pub and Steakhouse, as they use ANPR cameras and operate a car reg check-in system inside the restaurant. If you park there without being a customer (and without logging your car reg on the tablet) you will get a fine. Also, even as a patron they only give you a few hours parking, not enough for our all-day event.
If (as unlikely as it is) the car park fills up, be assured there is street parking on Brox Road and Shaw Close. The yellow lines end just past the convenience store and the rest of the street is fair game.
What To Bring
If you have a table ticket (which most people will), there will be a table and a chair for you – all you need to do is bring your Amiga! This list will help ensure you don’t forget the essentials:
- Your Amiga
- A monitor
- Mouse, Mouse Mat and Joystick
- Power Cables and Power Supplies for your Amiga, Monitor and other peripherals
- Any games or software you need
- Speakers (if not built into your monitor)
- Mains extension lead (the more sockets the better)
- A screwdriver (just in case you need to open up your machine)
What’s Happening?
This will be an all-day user group meet up. It’s a chance for us to do all things Amiga –fix them, play games, show how to use different pieces of software and hardware, use them, show them off, talk about them – whatever you want to do.
We will get a couple of games contests going on the day (we’ll work it out and see what people fancy playing) and use the big screen for those. In the late afternoon and evening, we’ll have Amiga demos and documentaries playing on the big screen as well.
And of course there’s the BBQ!
Food and Drink, Dietary Requirements
We will be providing the following for the day:
- Tea, Coffee, Milk, Sugar, Artificial Sweetener (there’s a hot water urn in the kitchen for instant boiling water for drinks all day)
- Disposable coffee cups and disposable soft drink cups
- Bottled Water
- Canned soft drinks (Coke, Pepsi Max, Tango, 7-Up)
- Assorted Biscuits
- Assorted Crisps
- Assorted Chocolate Bars
- BBQ at lunchtime
Rough Plan For The Day
- 9am – Doors Open – Get the Tables Out
- 11am – Games Contest
- 1pm – Lunch
- 2.30pm – We Unveil the Kickstart 3 Cake
- 3pm – Games Contest
- 5pm – Revision Demos and Amiga Documentaries on the Big Screen
- 9pm – Doors Close
Tables And Stuff
Q: is there a final table plan?
A: Yes, the table plan has been emailed to all current ticket holders. We may have to make small changes before the big day, but this is broadly how things will lay out and where everyone is sitting.
Q: I’ve not been before, what is the venue like?
A: The venue is great, and a nice size. Ottershaw Village Hall (or Brox Hall as it used to be known) is Kickstart’s original venue and we are so pleased to be back home for this and our future meets. The floorplan is below and we have the entire venue for the day. The table plan is in the main Brook Hall. We will be using the Runnymede Room as the staging point for lunch and for snacks to keep the food away from the computers as much as possible, plus it will be a nice space to just go and have a break. There will be seating in the room as well. We have a fully equipped kitchen with hot water urn, so there will be tea and coffee available on-demand all day. We will also fill up the fridge with soft drinks and bottled water. You will also see there are plenty of toilets and storage space to put boxes, bags etc. during the day.
Q: Do I need to bring extension leads?
A: Yes – please bring lots of extension leads. There are lots of wall sockets and we will have extensions leads to expand those wall sockets, but you still need to bring your own extension leads to plug onto ours.
Q: Will there be name badges?
A: Yes, there will be name badges.
Q: Will everything be ready at 9am?
A: Doors open at the venue at 9am. Expect the first 15-20 mins to be a little bit chaotic as we get the tables and chairs out. Any help with that would be greatly appreciated. Last meet we had this done in less than 10 minutes. Similarly, we need to be out by 9pm, so the last 15-20 mins of the day will involve putting the chairs and tables away again and cleaning up.
Places To Stay
The nearest Premier Inn hotels with parking are Addlestone, Woking West and Cobham. The nearest Travelodges are Chertsey, Woking Central, Egham and Walton-on-Thames. We are also quite close to Heathrow Airport, so do also look at deals for airport hotels.
This Airbnb list of nice, affordable places to stay nearby may also have some availability left.
Kickstart Merchandise
You’ve been asking for Kickstart-branded clothing and other merchandise and I’m pleased to say this is now available. We have partnered with Ace Embroidery, who are producing a wide range of logo clothing for us made-to-order, featuring a choice of either embroidered logos or screen printed, depending on the option you go for. Our clothing web site is live and is already populated with T-shirts, Polo Shirts, Sweatshirts, Caps fleeces and more.
Every purchase supports the club, so please take a look and hopefully snap up an item or two.
https://kickstart.ace-online.co.uk/catalogue
Join Us Online
We’ve created Facebook, WhatsApp and Discord groups for you to join. We also have Instagram and X (the artist formerly know as Twitter) accounts for you to follow for updates.
- Discord: https://discord.gg/m5FqZMrfFZ
- WhatsApp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/BovLhFtwgT68wNaJ6it2Zq
- Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kickstartamiga
- X: https://twitter.com/amigakickstart
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amigakickstart/
The web site has RSS and Atom feeds so you can get easy alerts to any updates we post there.
A Quick Word About Kickstart 4 – Tickets On Sale Now!
- When: Sunday 29th September 2024
- Where: Ottershaw Village Hall, Brox Road, Ottershaw, Surrey, KT16 0HG
- Time: 9am-9pm
- Cost: £14-16 per person (price includes pizza lunch, the famous Kickstart cake, snacks and soft drinks throughout the day)
- Ticket Link: https://kickstartamigagroup.sumupstore.com/
Our last all-day meet of 2024 is now confirmed for Sunday September 29th 2024 at our regular venue in Ottershaw. We are also looking at arranging a Christmas meal in early December, possibly at the Miller and Carter opposite the hall, but in terms of an all day Amiga session, this will be the last of the year. We’ll be holding 3-4 meets in 2025, so don’t worry, we are not going anywhere.
As it’s the end of summer, we are going to have a pizza party for lunch to celebrate.
As always, we only have a limited number of tables (though we have recently bought more tables to take us to maximum capacity at the hall), so book early to avoid disappointment.
Table Ticket for Kickstart September 2024 Meet
Non-Table Ticket for Kickstart September 2024 Meet
That’s everything for now. Please get in touch if you have any questions!