PANtasia

PANtasia is the magazine of the Pan-Clan, which is the UK Pan-European Owners Club.

In May 1999, Peter succumbed to the siren calls of his youth and bought himself a motorbike. It was a Honda ST1100 Pan-European—similar to the one above, but black. The Pan is a big, heavy, cruising bike, and consistently comes at the top of the popularity polls for that type of bike. Peter and I had some good days out over the next three summers...fairweather bikers!...until he sold it in early 2002, prior to our move to Spain. We needed a bigger car to organise the move, you see...

In the early days of his ownership he searched the web for an owners' club and found the Pan-Clan. He duly paid his membership fees and joined up, and a little while later the first edition of the magazine dropped through the letterbox. It wasn't called PANtasia in those days, just the Magazine, and it was in an A4 format and, quite honestly, a bit amateur. It had some interesting reading in it, but the presentation, spelling, grammar and consistency left a lot to be desired. After wincing over the first couple of copies, I sent an e-mail to the then Editor, Colin, congratulating him on the content, pointing out a couple of the more glaring errors and asking if I could help. He replied that he was aware of the problems but had not previously been able to deal with them. He suggested that he send me e-mails with the articles for the next magazine attached as he received them, and I could proofread them and then send the 'corrected' versions back.

And so we began. The system works very well and has survived a changed of Editor, and the move of the proofreader to Spain! The current Editor, Jill, and I have evolved a very efficient system, and a set of 'house rules' to make the magazine more consistent, and have both received congratulations on the improvement in PANtasia. I enjoy the exercise of turning the raw material into the finished article, and it is nice to feel I am making a difference to the final result. Unfortunately, I cannot show it to you here, because it is not published online, but printed on old fashioned paper and posted to all members!

There is also a Spanish Pan European Club and their organisers were impressed with the magazine as well.