Membership Secretary's Profile

My names Chris Pinchen, and I'm the current Membership Secretary for the Middlesex & Surrey Borders Koi Section of the BKKS. We joined the MSB in December 1989. This was after a friend of mine (Paul) had seen an advert in a fish magazine, looking for members to join the MSB and BKKS. We both attended our first meeting at Hampton Football club, September 1989 and joined that December at the AGM meeting. The following year, at the AGM, one of the committee, one Alex Fraser volunteered both myself and Paul to become the next open show chairpersons, but Paul, eventually declined the position!!! (but being a cabinet joiner-chippy, I had him make the trophy plaques which I used for the show, I was not going to let him get off Scot free). 

With less than 5 months to prepare - mild panic!!!.... I bit the bullet and got down to work organising everything, well thats what it felt like, anyway!!! 

I managed to get together a great team of helpers who formed a show Committee, we all did a really sterling job,  we put on a show at the old Hampton football club grounds, which was a resounding success.  

I actually did two shows at these premises at the Hampton grounds, we then changed our club venue to the Kingston CIU club (we needed a larger venue to accommodate the growing membership), so we transferred the show to the Staines Rugby club, where I put on another two show’s for the club and helped as assistant show chairman with Kevin Kenny at the last show prior to Terry Hill taking over for the Kempton Park shows during 1995 to 98. 

Also, during this time, another MSB member Peter Bishop decided that the section needed a Club Newsletter.  Peter who was the main editor and myself acted as collator and assistant editor started the very first MSB section Newsletter, or should I say "A5 format Magazine", Edition 1 was produced for the February 1992 meeting. 

It looks as though this job has followed me, as once again I find myself as the Newsletter editor!!! I have also held the position of PRO, this was over a period of three years or so, on and off due to my work commitments. 

At our one of our closed shows, John Burns and myself decided that we would both volunteer for the positions of Secretary and Chairman. Also, you may be aware that I’m responsible for the MSB web sites.

Move to Farnborough - Hampshire

We moved to Farnborough, July 1994, so we had the problem of moving our Koi collection from our old West Drayton address, so we decided to take just the Koi, but some how that golden carp managed to get into the container that we used to transport them. <

We were given a semi rigid pool this was an 8’ dia. x 2'9" deep pool. This was the home for our collection of eighteen Koi and one golden carp for about two years, then they asked for the pool back!!!!

During the initial move, we only lost one Koi and another, which decided to investigate its surroundings, jumping out then trapped between the net cover and the side of the pond, so only two losses. We hurriedly made a quarantine facility so that we could re-house our collection, which measured 8’x 4’x 4’ made from roofing boards and lined with a butyl liner with layer of polystyrene to insulate from the cold, this was housed under cover between the back of our summer house and driveway fence. We used a Clover leaf III filter fed from a bottom drain and used a Grundfos circulator. 

 HORROR!!!!  I had to release the majority of the water to prevent it bursting, as you may imagine, this was a very tense time, but we managed to prevent any further problems. 

We then managed to obtain a large fibreglass water storage tank from Ron & Wendy Howlett, this measured about 6’ x 4’ x 4’  - This was a very suitable replacement for the original tank after a few modifications and patching up. Ron suggested to add to the rigidity and prevent bowing, we added some 4”x 3” timber, as a frame around the middle of the tank in a picture frame type manner. 

Sometime during this time we started to build our new pond!!! But we had a few problems, read on the next page to see the New Pond Project. 

Pond Pictures