hago News Archives - 2005

2005 - a summary...

2005 - related pages

December 2005

Merry Christmas from hago - read up about 2005, including how our MD meets his doppelgänger in a Curry House

Our now traditional Carol Concert at one of the local Sheltered Housing Schemes took place on December 15th

Our charity fund-raising total is now £25369

Welcome to the dozens of visitors from the Dave Gorman website forum, and more curiously, from the Kylie Minogue forum. If you're too far away to come to one of our concerts, let us at least show you around - see our Hampshire photos (opens in new window) and watch us in video

November 2005

Two years after winning the Guitar Orchestra Competition of Great Britain, we're delighted to hand over the crown to this year's winners...
Orquesta de Guitarras de la Escuela Municipal de Música y Danza de Donostia San Sebastian Gipuzkoa Spain
(Should look nice, engraved on the trophy...)   Well done everyone!

Our charity fund-raising total is now £24208 - come to our Xmas Concert on December 10th and help us reach £25000!

Hear Bruce Paine and hago playing part of Schindler's List from our July concert

Our set at Petersfield on November 12th in aid of Cecily's fund was a great success - the evening raised over £1000

All change at hago - we've bought more alto guitars (photo & story), and as a result, we have a Raimundo 1498 requinto & hard case for sale

Alan Carter-Davies from Nottingham contacted us about using one of our photos on the website he's building. If you enjoy poetry, visit www.poemsbyriver.co.uk

The month just gone was a busy one here at hago.org.uk - we served 48,892 pages - just 20% less than our local Borough Council!

October 2005

Our Spinnaker Tower pages attracted lots of visitors reading of the endless problems with the tower. Now the tower is open, it's time to present the other side of the coin in a set of glorious pictures from the Spinnaker Tower on our MD's website

Had a spam from a daft name at hago.org.uk?
Not us - honest - someone's using our email address as a fake reply-to again.
We don't sell fake pills. If you feel you need more inches down below to achieve that extra depth, we simply suggest a Niibori Bass guitar...

If you first came to our site following a link from Old New Thing about the Millennium Tower, you should know that there is good news - The Spinnaker Tower, which failed to open in 2000, is opening, by coincidence, just over 2000 days late...

A new home for us - our rehearsal venue is being redecorated (painfully slowly), we were assured it would re-open on September 16th. Sorry, October 1st. Sorry, October 14th. Sorry, October 21st. Sorry, November 7th. So we've moved to Lovedean - there's a photo of our October 6th rehearsal in the gallery

September 2005

New to classical guitar? Ten photos showing you how to tie really neat knots when you restring your guitar - now moved to our MD's website

A triple celebration at our first rehearsal of autumn - 2 new players and a new playee!

Our July concert is reviewed in Classical Guitar Magazine

We're about to hand over our crown, awarded with our victory at the 6th Guitar Orchestra Competition of Great Britain, as IGF begin organisation of the 7th...

August 2005

We regret that the Open Rehearsal we had planned for October 6th has been postponed because our rehearsal Hall is being refurbished and the contractors have failed to keep to their schedule, having slipped twice in two months...

Our page featuring the Bruce Paine & hago concert contains two reviews

July 2005

See & hear Bruce Paine & hago on video in our moving concert finale on the day of the London bombings

Visitors from outside our area - come and view the latest picture in our Hampshire Gallery (opens in new window)

Total raised for charity now £23812

The News features a large write-up and a photo of our July 1st Concert

Our July 7th Concert with Bruce Paine attracts a massive audience - one of the largest guitar concerts in the area. Photos and write-up.

Our July 1st Concert raises £580 for St James.

June 2005

Total raised for charity now £22532

Great fun at The Rowans - the audience start a singalong!

Thank you to our friends Cambridge Guitar Orchestra for a really enjoyable concert on June 11th!

May 2005

Phil Shaddock predicted disaster today if ... you guessed - the Spinnaker Tower again!

Total raised for s

April 2005

Welcome to the many visitors from the Old New Thing Blog - good to see you!

A new front page to help you leap feet first into our massive site

A small Press Kit for those people promoting our concerts.

We're pleased to announce that our 2005 Open Rehearsal is on October 6th. If you can sightread at Grade 3 standard, make a note of the date now - enjoy a fun evening out and try our unusual guitars too! More details soon.

March 2005

hago wish all our visitors a Happy Easter!

We've just sent out our latest newsletter - it's free and you can subscribe here
Two copies bounced - if you change your email address, you'll need to tell us here

We're serving more & more pages (last month we served 23,500 pages) so we reckon a spring-clean was due!

We're pleased to celebrate Easter and the first signs of spring and summer with a fresh new look to hago.org.uk

Here's what we've done :

  • We've made the website a little easier on the eye with softer colours and more white space
  • The website still works on an 800x600 monitor, but we're starting to make better use of larger monitors
  • We've made each page about 5% faster to load
  • We've used a few more of the features common to the more modern browsers
  • We've kept the layout compatible with older browsers like Netscape 4, and with text-based screen-readers
  • There's still no Javascript or cookies, so you can browse with your security settings as high as you like

The wanderer returns - we welcome back Avril, hago's first ever contra player

In response to a question asking for help, another string formula in our FAQs

Our ticket reservation system is upgraded to accept credit card payments for the Bruce Paine concert - AND you save money if you purchase on-line!

February 2005

The hago cup is awarded at the Portsmouth Music Festival again

Our 6th Birthday - cake, wine, lemonade, cake, tea & coffee. And cake.

More technical blurb for stringophiles (if such a word exists!)

Details of our very special Concert with New Zealander Bruce Paine and news of other forthcoming concerts

A heart-warming epilogue to our Hale Court Christmas Concert - £100 raised for Lloyd Scott's Charity Appeal

January 2005

Our very first long service awards! Photos and report

A rather belated 2-page feature & massive photo in Classical Guitar Magazine!

In response to an overseas request - photos of Hampshire - plus the connection between Privett & New Zealand
(Now moved to our Musical Director's Website - the above links still work)

A new Guitar Family FAQ 

A new home page photo