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Thank you to team member Hannah Elizabeth Wright for writing our quiz night blog.
The dogs are looking forward to another warm winter, thanks to all who participated in last Thursday’s quiz in the Salle des Fetes in Verfeil. With entrance fees, food, drink, our popular raffle and donations – including some that came afterwards from those who couldn’t attend – we managed to raise a whopping 1,096 euros – thank you!
We kicked off the evening with a welcome speech from Anke and D+D’s latest resident, Mr Q, who seemed very happy to be out and about. Anke did mention that he took himself straight to bed when he got in, but only after telling all the other dogs about how lovely Sarah Belcher’s tagine smelt and that he had very much hoped he’d get to taste it. Much to his (and Anke’s dismay), he had to leave before it was served.
A fun night was had by all with two teams, the ‘Top Dogs’ and the ‘Saint Projet Saints’ (with only 3 members!) claiming joint first place. A big congratulations to both teams who all came to the stage to choose a bottle of vino each to celebrate their victory. There was one other team that also deserves a special mention – mine! I had entered us as ‘The Try Hards’ which proved to be the perfect name, as there was a lot of head scratching/disagreeing, which resulted in us coming last in part 1. For part 2, in a desperate bid to change our luck, we tweaked our name to ‘The (Must) Try Harders’ but came last again – it was a spectacular defeat which we all laughed about in the end. We had hoped there would be a prize for doing that badly.
On the last two quiz nights we have been blessed with the presence of chef, Sarah Belcher, who cooks everything from scratch in the kitchen at the Salle. This year we had the choice of a delicious chicken or vegetable tagine, with harissa sauce on the side. We got lots of ‘compliments to the chef’ and ‘the spices were perfectly balanced’ when we collected the empty plates. Sarah runs the popular restaurant, the ‘Boui Boui’, near Arnac very kindly donates her time, along with providing the ingredients for cost. We are so appreciative of this Sarah – thank you! Our lips were licking for a second time with Ali Stickler’s legendary (back by popular demand) sticky toffee pudding and cream. I was so excited to eat mine that I forgot to take a photo of it, so had to go back for a second serving.
With our tummies glowing, it was time for our ‘Winter Evenings’ themed raffle, which was kindly organised by Caroline Mills. The winners were able to take their pick from a variety of prizes including wine, ginger cake, scrabble, books and chocolate.
Also available to buy on the night was some of Theresa Wildsmith’s charming pottery. She has very kindly donated this to us to sell at events such as this with 100% of the proceeds going to D+D. Thank you Theresa!
A big thank you also, to Jo Castelli who helped to set up, serve, wash up and tidy away and to those who participated in the quiz, then helped put all the furniture away at the end.
Last but not least, un grand merci beaucoup to Gillian and Karl for organising the entries and creating a very (challenging – for my team anyway) fun and memorable quiz. We couldn’t do it without you at the helm.
