Carols and quizzes, crash bang wallop

It has been a glorious day - well until the evening - bright sunshine although cool.

We take my f-i-l to the 'Open Door Café' at King Charles the Martyr church here in PB.  The café is run entirely by volunteers and all surplus income goes to charity.  They've been going nearly 10 years and have so far raised in excess of £40000.

At this time of year they have a short carol service before the lunches start so we picked up my f-i-l (relieving him from the bangs and crashes of the new boiler being fitted) and took him to the church.  He's not so steady on his feet these days, however, with a lot of encouragement and some distraction from thinking he wasn't going to make it, he did manage to walk in from the car park to the church.  Carols were sung with gusto, interspersed by bible readings from the vicar.

You can imagine the queue for lunch afterwards.  I think there must have been about 100 eating today! Still, the ladies and gentlemen helpers all coped very well and we didn't have to wait too long to eat.

Back at the f-i-l's house and the hot water is operational.  Should have heating by the end of the day.  To save some time Brian asked me to go to the local plumber to pick up some imperial/metric pipe adapters.  Anything to help f-i-l get back to the normal routine as quickly as possible.

Tonight we had the final quiz at the golf club.  Shortly before PA picked us up it started to rain heavily and just as I was starting the draft of this blog a big flash of lightning heralded a big clap of thunder followed shortly by three more flashes and bangs.  Fortunately, by the time we'd arrived at the golf club the rain had eased.

We've been called Octomaniacs this year, sometimes 8, sometimes 7 and sometimes 6 on the team.  Our good friends Barbara and Alan were in the original line-up.  Alan was diagnosed with liver and bone cancer earlier in the year and has found it harder to cope with an evening out.  He's on a new trial being run at Bart's Hospital which we are all hoping will be able to slow down, if not stop, the disease spreading.  

Here are some sketches of team members from this evening.

 

SH

PA

DA

A record number of teams tonight.  Murray's Mints came top for the second month running.  Good job they've only been coming for a couple of months as we've been top of the league (best 8 scores out of 12) for the last couple of months and although we only came third this evening, we managed to retain the lead.  Come the new year a new name will be required so we can be anonymous for a few months!

To crown the evening, my 200 club number was drawn for the special half-yearly prize.  Helps to pay some of the bar bill!