Armed with cupcakes, sausage rolls and numerous ex-members, we were ready to limber up the grey matter…
By Katie Garner
l-r: Jess and Katie
No social calendar would be complete without the obligatory quiz night, and luckily for us, match secretary Frank had just the thing up his sleeve, as the swimming club that he helps to organise and run hosts a quiz evening every year. This year’s question special took place on Saturday 20th September, at the Holy Cross church hall near central Hornchurch. Kicking the night off at 7.30pm, we had two tables reserved. Clicking our pens into the on position and shuffling our papers importantly, Wychelm was ready to roll.
On our first table we had myself and Southend based sister Jess, as well as squad player Het who we were relying on for all of our sports related questions. Mental health worker Joel came up trumps with plenty of answers here and there, whilst West Ham fan Frank rocked up late due to his football commitments. Ex-member Mike Spencer also made a re-appearance with his lovely sister Christine to give our group seven brains. Sat at table one; we aptly named ourselves ‘The Onesies’.
Our second table was a full house of eight people, headed up by couples. Treasurer Nick and his wife Sandra came laden with sandwiches, whilst Janet and David propped their eyes open after an early morning flight home from their holiday that day. Ex-members Dave and Jean also managed to bag themselves some seats, bringing Jean’s sister and her husband along too to really top up the table. With two Daves on the table, they went for the team name of ‘Dave Squared’.
l-r: Nick and Sandra
Turning up empty handed to a quiz night is like attending a child’s birthday party without a present – just not the done thing. I decided to bake a batch of banana and pecan cupcakes to take along, stashing a bottle of sauvignon blanc in my bag to share with Jess. Joel brought tiger sausage rolls and some lattice rolls, whilst Frank shared his traditional snacks of hot sausage rolls and cocktail sausages. Mike and Christine provided ready salted crisps for us all to munch on as well.
There were nine tables in total, so we definitely had our work cut out for us if we wanted to hit the high scores! The rounds were geography, sport, music, TV, history, films, art and literature, science and nature, spot the intro and general knowledge as well as the picture round, which this year was name the flag. Luckily for us, we whizzed through the flags, knowing the majority straight off and just having a few to mull over before we had to hand our sheet in during in the halfway interval.
Het and his winnings!
Also during the interval, the raffle was picked. For £1 a strip, contestants could be in with winning themselves a prize from the elusive raffle table, which I have never in my life seen. The man on the table next to us cleaned up nicely, his three winning tickets landing him a bottle of white wine each time, although our lot didn’t do too badly either. Nick had one lucky ticket, with which he chose a yellow orchid romantically for Sandra. Het also got to visit the prize station, selecting some gel pens for his children, whilst Janet’s scoring strip left her to opt for the Dairy Milk chocs – never a bad option.
Always seeming to be near the end of the score updates, I wasn’t holding out much hope for our table although in the end we did a lot better than I was expecting. I think the key to our success was consistency, hitting an average score each time and we also played our joker cannily, opting for the science and nature round which was a good move. The Onesies ended up coming fourth with 63 ½ points which was delightfully unexpected and pleasing. Funnily enough Dave Squared only pipped us by one spot coming third, with 81 ½ points. I think this is probably the best we have ever done collectively at one of these quiz nights so a big thumbs up to everyone who came along and shared their knowledge to represent Wychelm. We showed those swimmers!
