By Dave Tooley

Mick Estlick…now where does one begin to write about him?

Mick was the founder member of the club, and did it purely because he LOVED administrating. 

Some people are do-ers, some like talking about it, Mick liked administrating it.

Give him something to organise, and he was happy.  If it needed organising, it would need a list.  Lists begat more lists, and before you knew it Mick was up to his ears in to-do lists for just about everything you could possibly imagine. (and some you wouldn’t even dream about)

On club nights we would have a roll call like assembly at school.  Mick would painstakingly tick off everyone who was in attendance, and charge them all their weekly subs. (another list) He reminded me of that guy in the Tv program ‘Ever decreasing circles’ where his entire life revolved around organising other peoples lives.  The problem with this was the vast majority of the Scooter Club were Anarchists and Piss Heads, and hated being bossed around almost as much as they hated the greasers from the ‘Waite a While café’

The consequence of this was most club nights would descend into a slanging match between the rowdier elements at the back of the club room and the ‘committee’ at the front.  By 9pm everyone wanted to get down to the pub to slake their thirsts, and no amount of criticism from Mr Estlick was going to hold them up.  Regardless of how important he thought it was to the club activities.

He is now residing in the U.S.A. and I actually made contact with him last year.  I believe he had in mind creating a Solent city website along the lines of how Marten has just done, so he may well be interested in adding to these critiques.

He originally worked at Titchfield as a Training Officer in the same company as me. (Plesseys) only he was in the Windings division, and I worked in the Aerospace Division. 

When the club started to fold in on itself after we lost our premises, there was a sort of ‘Coup’ within its members.  Trevor Aspden took over the reins for a brief period as chairman, but after a small period of struggling along the remaining folks who had tried to persevere with some semblance of a club finally gave up the struggle and called it a day.

Which only goes to show that every club needs an ‘Admin’ guy who enjoys doing it just for the buzz it gives him, and perhaps Mick Estlick was right all along.

Note from M.H.

Mick was really the life blood of the club, although he was a pain, nothing would have happened without him. The photos from newspaper clips would not be there as he got it sorted. No outings, the I.O.W. rally with us doing the marshelling would not have happend. He was our Captain Manwairing.