By now, Robbie, many other MMD members and I have sent quite a few
messages back and forth trying to sort out a little problem of
*readability* of international text in order to be able to post the Fair
Organ Preservation Society's Coming Events Booklet and list of museums.
With this in mind, I thought I'd better present myself properly to you
all.

I was born ..... well, we'll skip that bit.  As another hobby of mine is
genealogy I could bore you to tears with "My uncle's uncle was Molotov"
(He was, but that's another story.)

I'm a qualified electrical engineer who gave up on electrics and went
into pumping some years ago and also decided that a job in selling might
be nice - so I combined the two.  I'm still in selling some 20 or so
years later.

My continuing interest in mechanical music stems from a school holiday
outing to Holland.  We travelled from England via France and Belgium and,
on the way, stopped at a road-side cafe for a break.  The funny looking
juke-box in the corner ate a lot of my pocket money.  As a member of the
"Beatles" age who arranged trips to see them for my school friends, being
entranced by a cafe-organ was not exactly cool as far as my friends were
concerned.  I spent a small fortune on the way back, too.

I had, in fact been introduced to fair organs before then when I was
still a very young boy.  I live in the Midlands and a local park
contained a funfair with, by then, dilapidated rides and an organ that
was badly in need of repair.  As I grew older, the fair stopped riding
and the organ stopped playing and, by the time I was getting two digits
in my age, it was derelict.

One day, I was there with my family and my late father and I walked
around the fair watching it being broken up - literally - and burnt.  The
fair was being removed to make way for something else.  As a fan of the
organ in its better days, I asked "Hey, mister, does it still work?" The
reply indicated that it did - just - and a horribly out-of-tune and only
partly rendered book, itself in tatters, was his gift to me.  Luckily,
the organ front was saved, in the main, and it now adorns a replacement
organ well known in these parts.  The organ itself was burned as I
watched; the pipes being thrown onto the bonfire that had once been a
wooden scenic ride.  Years later, my flesh crawled as I held a photograph
of that same ride taken no more than a week before it was destroyed.

I have similar piles of damaged wood in my workshop that used be musical
instruments.  I took one of them apart about four years ago - it's still
waiting to be restored.  My excuse is that I'm too busy doing work for
the Fair Organ Preservation Society (FOPS hereafter).  I joined the
Committee in, er, well quite a long time ago.  I wanted to do something
to change the perception of many members of it being elitist.  I doubt I
have - I'm probably seen in a similar light myself now.

Anyway, during my spell so far I've spent about 3 years doing the rounds
of the rally fields providing a Society sales stand where we sold
cassettes, postcards and a mass of other mech music associated items
produced by the FOPS.  I acted as membership secretary from 1987 until
1990, writing the Society's column in the weekly  fairground newspaper,
World's Fair for about a year at the same time.  I transferred the paper
listings I received into a database at the same time.  I took over as
editor of The Key Frame, the FOPS quarterly magazine, in January 1991.

This time of year I'm particularly busy in the job: an edition of the
magazine, collating the Coming Events Booklet, the AGM minutes from last
year, notice and information for this year's AGM in March, designing
vouchers for money off entry fees to rallies and museums for members, and
advertisements for the Society's Mail Order sales have been sent off
today.  A couple of weeks for the printers to do their job, and John Page
(no, not Jon Page), the current membership secretary, and I will spend a
day locked in my office stuffing 1,000 copies of each item plus other
advertising flyers  into 1,000 brown envelopes before John carts them
away to be posted.  Three weeks off, and I start the process of putting
the next magazine together.

As I hinted at the beginning, I've sent the Coming Events Booklet and
list of museums to Robbie for onwards transmission.  When the problem of
international symbols has been sorted, no doubt it will be made available
to you.  It lists events and sites all over the world, so I'm interested
in others to include in the future.

Just so that I don't get bored, I play on a Garrett showman's tractor of
1920 during the summer rally season and through into the Christmas
season.  A fellow Rotarian, John Wootton, owns this engine, a 56-key
Bursens organ and a 1920s showman's living wagon which we display at
rallies.  My wife, Sue, and my daughters, Sarah and Alice, do most of the
polishing with John's sister, Angela, while John and I get up steam and
do the oiling.  Bacon butties and lots of tea get us through the morning
until we can use the oven at the front (I think it's called a smoke box,
really) to cook meat and a number of veg for lunch.  I get to listen to
the organ all day and play on a traction engine - good, eh?

As the rally season winds down, Sue and I get withdrawal symptoms so,
seven years ago, we started arranging a get-together at our home in
mid-September.  As many organ owners as want set up camp on our garden
and the field alongside and play to anyone who will listen.  To begin
with, it was just something we put on ourselves; it's an official FOPS
event now.  There's no charge and no-one gets a fee for bringing their
organ - it's just for fun and sociability.  As we live in a lock keepers
cottage on the Coventry Canal, we get a few curious visitors from the
boats that pass by.  We've gained a few members that way, too.  This year
it's 20-21 September.  Please send me an e-mail if you want to come and
need more details.  You are all more than welcome to come and see the
kind of person who waffles on like this!

I've only been aware of the MMD since the beginning of February, but I'm
totally hooked.  Keep it up, Jody and Robbie, and keep the comments
coming.

Phil Benson

 [ Jody recommends that we place the FOPS "Coming Events" file on the
 [ MMD web site at http://www.foxtail.com .  As a web page created with
 [ HTML all the foreign characters will be preserved.  It's preface will
 [ have a suitable statement explaining that FOPS holds the copyright and
 [ that it's not to be copied except for personal use, and so on, and it
 [ will also tell how to get information on joining FOPS, etc.  Other web
 [ sites will be invited to place pointers.  How does this sound?
 [ -- Robbie