1st December – Christmas Social

We had some magnificent yoyos entered for the challenge albeit too few. The great yoyo performance was scheduled for after the break. Meanwhile the members divided into teams for the quiz.

There were 6 teams with names ranging from the imaginative (Table 1) through risqué (Pickle me Walnuts) to the dangerous, at least as far as pronunciation goes (Funk Nose). The Plebs demonstrated their class in leading the Panto round but the Funk Nose edged in front on the Cars round. They stayed in front once they scored a max for recognising Pictures of Turners, astutely playing their joker for double points. No other team scored above half marks for this round including Adrian Smith’s team where Adrian didn’t recognise himself!

At the interval we were treated to a magnificent spread courtesy of Lynda, assisted at the servery by Denis and Isabella Hilditch.

Then came the yoyo contest. Nine yoyos were demonstrated by their owners in a grand line up. Ian Woodford had entered large and small ones so Alan Sturgess took charge of one of them. Ian made the large one after his wife looked askance at his first effort and said that size still mattered. After a few minutes she was proved right as the small one had stopped along with 4 others. The remaining 4 finalists were invited to do some tricks. The winner was judged to be Phil Hill by the panel of 3 guest judges who were also asked to nominate the best looking yoyo.

By 2 out of 3 the award went to Denis Hilditch for his lovely segmented yoyo with Bryan Matcham getting the vote of the 3^rd judge for his novelty Christmas pudding boxed yoyo.

Back to the Quiz and the cryptic “Name the Country” round was surprisingly too easy with everyone scoring 9 or 10. By playing their Joker the Plebs were back in contention after this round and clung on. But in the final round on Sport they needed to beat Funk Nose by 9 to win and were denied in spite of a poor round from the leaders.

So prizes were awarded and the raffle was called by stand-ins Keith and Susan Barnes to round off a jolly evening.

Dave Gibbard