{"id":3920,"date":"2025-06-13T11:45:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T10:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=3920"},"modified":"2025-06-13T11:51:56","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T10:51:56","slug":"windsors-own-entente-cordiale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/2025\/06\/13\/windsors-own-entente-cordiale\/","title":{"rendered":"Windsor&#8217;s own Entente Cordiale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Fifty years ago George Meakin, while visiting relatives in Belgium,<br>decided to look for a club in order to play a game of table tennis.<br>He found TTK Schoten, in a town on the outskirts of Antwerp,<br>where he was made to feel extremely welcome. The rest is<br>history.<br>Over the many years since, despite George&#8217;s passing, firm<br>friendships have developed, nurtured by bi-annual visits involving<br>George&#8217;s beloved Windsor TTC (of Clacton-On-Sea, Essex) and<br>TTK Schoten.<br>During the weekend of 7th, 8th and 9th June, Windsor TTC once<br>again welcomed their friends from TTK Schoten, for the latest in<br>the series of visits. The 17 Belgian guests stayed with their host<br>families. This included Jenny Higgins, George&#8217;s daughter.<br>Over the course of a long weekend, the table tennis players and<br>friends enjoyed both singles and doubles tournaments, a disco,<br>karaoke and a friendly game of snooker, as well as much<br>socialising, eating and drinking. Gifts including a Friendship<br>trophy were exchanged.&nbsp;<br>New friendships were made and old friendships renewed. It has<br>been a wonderful example of people from different cultures and<br>countries coming together, thanks to their mutual love of the<br>game of table tennis. Windsor Table Tennis Club will hopefully<br>travel, as invited, over to Schoten in two years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Report by Sharon Gowlett<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-1-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"473\" src=\"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-1-1024x473.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3923\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-1-1024x473.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-1-300x139.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-1-768x355.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-1-1536x710.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-1-2048x946.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-2-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"473\" src=\"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-2-1024x473.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3924\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-2-1024x473.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-2-300x139.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-2-768x355.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-2-1536x710.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Belgium-2-2048x946.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery columns-0 is-cropped\"><ul class=\"blocks-gallery-grid\"><\/ul><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fifty years ago George Meakin, while visiting relatives in Belgium,decided to look for a club in order to play a game of table tennis.He found TTK Schoten, in a town on the outskirts of Antwerp,where he was made to feel extremely welcome. The rest ishistory.Over the many years since, despite George&#8217;s passing, firmfriendships have developed, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3920"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3925,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3920\/revisions\/3925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.essextabletennis.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}