Wednesday, February 15, 2017

14th Feb - A Valentine from the Bowling Club?

 

Image result for packhorse bowling club macclesfield

It was a pleasure to walk into the Pack Horse Bowling Club as there had been rumours of it closing down; apart from the bowling greens there are two large bars/meeting rooms with a well stocked bar and a warm welcoming atmosphere. There are many activities catered for and they do an excellent job raising money for the East Cheshire Hospice.

The quiz team we have known for many years and it was good to see them again. The questions were varied and produced some surprises – who knew the name of the river flowing through Middlewich for instance (in fact there are three)  and to link Sheffield and Lisbon with the fact that both are built on seven hills required a big leap in imagination. The History was unusual in that it was a picture round that went down well.

The Sport round however did not play to the Lemmings’ strengths and the home team leapt ahead and by the end of the Specialist rounds the Bowling Club led with 66 to 54.

Not particularly bothered the Lemmings have made up bigger deficits in the past and entered the General Knowledge with equanimity. These questions were perhaps a little top-heavy with sport (the Lemmings having already been humiliated) and inconsistent (the Heinz empire started not with beans but horseradish sauce!!) but playing with discipline the deficit was slowly eaten up – Matt in particular put in a splendid performance  with Tomo close behind - but it was not to be! The Specialist finished with the Lemmings just a nose ahead with 78 to 76 – but still 10 points adrift – final score 142 to 132.

Individual scores were Bob 6/12, Matt 15/24, Nick 3/9 and Tomo 15/15 conferred points were 10/10 with 5/8 pass-overs. The home team collected 6/3 pass-overs.

The evening was rounded off with a very tasty selection of sandwiches and for what was definitely a first for the Lemmings – cheese-filled oatcakes!!

Many thanks to the management team, to the quiz team and to Heather who kept a light hand on the proceedings as question master for a pleasant evening – but no valentines!

2 comments:

Jon Thompson said...

The questions this week were definitely from the harder part of Quiztown. However, the upside was that the butties were excellent at The Pack Horse.

Matt R said...

Much as the temptation is there to bash the GKs, the damage was done in the Specialists - specifically Geog and Sport. Can't see any imbalance in the Geog, would have preferred the other sports (we were first-second), but this doesn't detract from a typically accessible and enjoyable Park Taverners' set.

The GKs were something quite different - little periods of excessive ease, accompanied by a veritable stampede of armadillos - my set were a microcosm in point, mostly fine but the gulf between having to identify the knight on a chessboard and the even more obscure name of a very obscure citrus fruit was wider than normal! There was a spell near the start of the GKs where 17 questions yielded a sum total of 11 points. Honourable mentions (not yet given) to gurneyflaps, Durnovaria, the River Tove, Holtby, Dahlias, In the Night Garden (Bob and I have both suffered at length as (grand) parents, but the Wottingers are bit-part extras that escaped us both) and Lappi in terms of creating resigned silence/wild guesses across the room. There were enough gettable questions to lift this set away from the very base of the QSL in my opinion, but I would be perplexed if they score better than the Robin did last week.

Our opponents belied their league position and played a steadfast game when we sneaked ahead during the GKs, I felt that the daft questions were shared reasonably fairly around sides.

With one match not in the bag, I noticed yesterday that the Dolphin (ran very close by the Royal Oak) were the only team to win going first-second, maybe we were running into the wind?