Barking & Dagenham Plus

‘Twas a day marked by strange omens: the postal strike … the swipe card system in our office breaking down … Duncan’s horses turning and eating themselves etc etc etc. However, on this particular Friday 13th, your humble blogmaster escaped and travelled to Tottenhill, near Kings Lynn, for the Kings Lynn Midsummer Hallowe’en Disco.

Leaving aside the rather obvious observation that Hallowe’en refers specifically to the pagan day-of-the-dead festival of Samhain on October 31st, this was the weekend of Kings Lynn Plus’ annual Disco and camp-over. It was also the weekend of the National Rounders, which was being organised in Kings Lynn to coincide with it. There were members of:

• Barking & Dagenham
• Bishops Stortford
• Brentwood
• Chelmsford
• Coventry
• Dunstable
• Havering
• Hillingdon
• Leamington Spa
• Lichfield
• Lincs Quest
• Redbridge
• Romford
• Solihull
• Sutton Colefield;

as well as Kings Lynn themselves, and yours truly from Thurrock. There were about 50 people there, which is apparently more than last year.

On Friday evening there was Karaoke, provided by Adam Redshaw of the Express Roadshow, as well as Hallowe’en party games. I came second in a game of Twister!

On Saturday there was a trip to one of Thurrock Plus’ perennially favourite businesses, Beers of Europe. Kings Lynn Plus had negotiated for us a 10% discount on what we spent there.

Here are my tasting notes:

• Desperados – a old favourite of mine, a 6% French beer flavoured with Tequila and Lime. Very good.
• Kriska – from the makers of Desperados, a so-called Vodka-flavoured beer. Given that Vodka doesn’t actually have much of a flavour of its own, I was intrigued by the description. In actual fact it turned out to taste something like a “White Beer”.
• Golden Ginseng – does exactly what it says on the tin, i.e. a 3.6% beer said to have added Ginseng. Actually, I could not taste any Ginseng, and did not particulary notice any effect the addtion of this herb might have had, so it really tasted like an unremarkable beer.

In the afternoon was the National Rounders, organised by East Anglia Area generally, and run by me on the day itself. This was won by a scratch-team entitled “Golden Balls”.

Thence back to the campsite for a Barbecue, and a Hallowe’en themed fancy dress disco in the evening: I came as a Werewolf. I had the honour of presenting Kings Lynn Plus with the President’s Trophy for Best Group in the Federation (I took off my Werewolf mask first, though!). They had won it at the National AGM in February, but it was only until now that they were able to get hold of the actual Trophy from the previous winner.