Pub Quizzing and Extreme(?) Archery

Snow flurries are very fashionable this week

With Storm Doris now a memory and her successor (Ewan) a comparatively mild (though very wet) one I should have been able to report by now all the damage repaired and secured and the mess tidied away. Sadly, the weather has lately been a succession of wet, windy days featuring a bitingly cold NW wind and flurries of snow and sleet and hail storms. The ground is very wet underfoot and we have returned to puddles everywhere. We have been rather pinned down and not keen to go out and do garden stuff, so the entertainments have all been indoor flavoured.

The ewes in a sleet-flurry

Liz got back involved in our much-loved Kent-days hobby of pub-quizzing. The 'Centre' (really the 'Village Hall') where she works, organise a table quiz annually as a fund raiser for the Hall and Liz, in her 'admin' role was looking at doing 'scorer'. I had cried off on the grounds that the questions would all have an Irish flavour and leave me feeling foolish in my ignorance of Irish history, politics, geography, GAA/sports and so on. At the 11th hour another scorer volunteered and Liz was free to join a table and compete.

New dark green tarp turns white in the wet snow.

In the event it was a hugely successful night and Liz had a great time. Her table came 4th behind the winning (Chairman's) gang and 2nd placed table Captained by her boss, so appropriate, politically correct decorum was maintained! The questions were not very Irish at all, so my fears were groundless and I regretted not going - I have put my name down for the next one. In fact, Liz won a decent meat-voucher in the raffle, so she came out of the night in profit. Everyone's a winner!

Assembling the target 'tug' - that little
Mercedes by Paul's right foot.

My indoor entertainment came in the form of a rather silly fun-shoot at archery, jokingly called "Extreme Archery, Moving Targets" on Sunday. Club coach (Con) had decided we should all shoot at balloons towed behind a radio controlled, battery operated toy car which he would drive up and down in front of the big, arrow-stopping, target 'butts'. Helium balloons would be used to hold up the ends of the tow-rope and the shoot-able balloons would be tied on half way up this. That way, the car would zoom across the range dragging all the targets in its wake like an upside-down bridal wedding train. Mad? It was.

Three archers start shooting as the yellow balloon (sorry,
 barely visible in this pic) enters the top right corner of the
killing zone. 

Just in time we established a rule that you could only shoot at targets while they were in front of the butts. That way we should get fewer arrows embedded in the nice, clean, new plastered walls.

About to let fly. 

You were very rarely able to hit the helium balloons because these only trailed down into the zone when the car was going full speed, straight across the range. I finally nailed those (both with one arrow!) late in the game and we found that the one remaining helium one was not buoyant enough to hold up the train. The game was over and we had to go back to serious target-shooting. It was all very silly but good fun.

Warming Winter food - roast chicken 'saddles' and 'champ'

Which brings us to pancake day. As I sit here and write this, I am comfortably full of pancakes expertly cooked, as ever, by the Lady of the House. Liz is long established as the best pancake cook 'we' know and we spent many a Shrove Tuesday with Diane and John. plus D's step-father Denis consuming Liz's output so fast that she had to put her foot down at the end and save some for herself, or she'd have used up all the batter watching us hoover them up. For me, the ONLY WAY is lemon juice and sugar but Liz does occasionally sneak a 'Nutella' one down.

Liz is off tonight at the latest play rehearsal while she digests hers - these days 'we' let all the pancakes get cooked and stacked in the warm oven before either of 'us' starts one. I don't suppose I actually could keep up with her 2-pan cookery but it'd be fun trying. Pass me the next lemon and the jar of vanilla sugar, now.