March 2024 meeting

We met on Tuesday 5th March for the popular Skittles Evening with Supper at the Royal British Legion, Limpsfield. 

20 members and 1 guest arrived to compare their skittle skills. Names were picked randomly and 5 teams were quickly organised, namely: Denbies, Nutbourne, Godstone, Sedlescombe and Albury (wine aficionados will recognise that these are Vineyards). 

We managed to squeeze in 5 rounds (with a break for food and refreshments) and the eventual winning team was Denbies on 149 (Derek F, Ian P, Val L and Francis). The player with the highest individual cumulative score was Derek F on 49 and the player with the highest score in a round was also Derek F with 13. Derek had obviously been practising!!! 

Many thanks go to the British Legion, for a warming and plentiful supper, Val and Janet for organising the evening and Graham B for some of the transportation but the main vote of thanks must go to Graham H and Caroline for the very efficient computerised scoring and the organising of the teams.

Our next meeting is a talk on The Nutfield Priory by Amanda McGuigan on 9th April in Christ Church Hall at 8.00pm and hope to see a good turnout of members!

February 2024 meeting

13 members duly assembled for a night of horse racing, kindly organised by Graham and Caroline. We were all given a ‘racing card’ showing 8 races (each race had 8 runners) and allocated £100 (imaginery, of course!) and could bet on up to 3 horses in each race.

Our first race was the All-Comer’s Cup, including runners entitled Got the Trots, Clippity Clop and Hi Ho Silver. Giddy Up was the winner at 6:1. Another race was the Handicap Hurdles, with Blind Hasabbat, Chronic Elf and Under the Weather. The winner here was Double Vision at 2:1. As the evening wore on, members were really entering into the fun and were placing larger bets, consequently leaving one member in negative equity after the last race.

The winner with a final pot of £301 was Janet(!!) and second place went to Pat with £241. A bottle of wine and a box of chocolates were the rewards respectively.

Many thanks indeed to Graham and Caroline for a very entertaining and well organised evening and for supplying all the equipment and also to Mary and Derek for the raffle.

We also celebrated a member’s special birthday with a cake and some sparkling wine. We wished Heather a very, very happy 90th birthday, which she will celebrate later in the month. She said it was a lovely surprise and much appreciated. 

Our March meeting will be on Tuesday, 5th March when we will be at the British Legion Club, Limpsfield for skittles and supper. Always a very enjoyable evening.

January 2024 New Year Dinner

An excellent ‘New Year’ dinner was enjoyed by twenty Wine Club Members for their January meeting, in the congenial setting of the Bletchingley Arms. 

The staff were very welcoming and did a great job considering the size of the group. As ever, it was a thoroughly enjoyable occasion with good food, good wine and jolly good company!

The next meeting is on Tuesday, 6th February and is our Horse Racing Evening – come along to find out who will be doing the racing!

December 2023 meeting

Eighteen members, mostly wearing Christmas themed items of clothing attended our Christmas Party on the 5th December. A warming and welcome glass of mulled wine was very kindly provided by Graham and Janet which gave everyone a chance to chat. 

Individual members brought their own contributions to provide a buffet meal which was laid out for us all to help ourselves. 

Then it was time for some Christmas-themed quizzes and a ‘Guess the Pantomime/Show’. The quizzes did prove to be quite hard but everyone certainly knew their Pantos!! The outright winners were Graham, Caroline, Kent and Jane. Well done!!

Many thanks go to Mary and Derek for an absolutely superb raffle.

Look forward to catching up with everyone at our New Year Dinner on the 16th January at the Bletchingley Arms.

November 2023 AGM meeting

November was the month for our AGM and was attended by 20 members and 2 guests. The vital business of the evening being the appointment of Officers and Committee but luckily no arm twisting was required so the ‘old’ Committee was duly re-elected:

Chair : Val Large
Secretary : Janet Bailey
Treasurer : Graham Bailey
Committee : Heather Charman, Mary Freeman, Derek Freeman and Kent Sandiford

Following the AGM, it was ‘eyes down and look in’ as Bingo was next on the Agenda.

Next month we will be meeting on Tuesday, 5th December for the Club’s Christmas Party which will include Members’ food contributions and mulled wine, together with a few seasonal quizzes.

At the Christmas Party details will be available for our New Year Dinner on the 16th January.

October 2023 Meeting

18 members and a guest gathered on 3rd October in Christ Church Hall for a Quiz gathering. Graham and Caroline were the quiz masters. The quiz had 8 sections, and the last section looked for connections between the questions. Some questions were reasonably straightforward, but others involved much head scratching. 

There was a section described as “A fruit consisting of a hard or tough shell, an area of open land planted with crops”. Can you guess what the subject was? The specific questions were: (1) What major event happened in 1884? (2) How many Grade 2 listed buildings are there in the village: 11, 22, 33 or 44? (3) The official green in the village is next to? (4) The name of the MP for the village? (5) Started by the Shinner family in 1957? (6) The name of the long-distance walk through the village? How many can you answer?

Val and Pat won the prize for the best team name (“Haven’t got a clue”). The winning team was the Hofmeisters (Graham B & Derek F), closely followed by the Teetotalers (Maggie & Geoff), and the Odd Ones (Liz & Francis). Appropriately, “Haven’t got a clue” propped up the table, and won the crisps.

Many thanks to Graham and Caroline for producing and running an excellent quiz, and to Val for the raffle.

We will next be meeting on November 7th for the AGM and games. For further details, please contact Janet on 822 333.

September 2023 Meeting

Our September meeting was a ‘Members’ Favourite Wine’-tasting evening. Derek L and Geoff brought along 3 of their favourite tipples for everyone to sample and fifteen members duly arrived armed with the all important nibbles! 

There were 6 wines for tasting – 4 white wines, a rosé and a red. For the scoring of each wine, we had to guess the grape, the country/region, the year it was made and the price (one point for each correct answer, so a total of 24 points was up for grabs. The grape varieties ranged from Malbec, Merlot, Pinot Grigio, Pecorino, Trebbiano Di Lugana and Sauvignon Blanc and the countries/regions from France, Argentina, Italy and Spain. 

Unfortunately, the scoring system this time appeared to confuse some members (I must stress here that it was definitely not due to the intake of alcohol) so there was a show of hands instead (much simpler) and the Trivento Malbec Rose from Argentina was the favourite at a cost of £8.50 from Tesco, supplied by Derek.

A big thank you to Derek and Geoff for bringing along the wines, and also to Mary and Derek for organising the raffle.

Our next meeting will be our Quiz Night on the 3rd October.