After an absence of some years, the club entered a team in the Round Table Annual Charity Pub Quiz last month.

On successive Friday evenings in February, various cerebral members gathered in the Edenbank Hotel to strut their stuff and field questions from the trivial to the arcane all for fun and to support a good cause.  The first session on 6th Feb. saw David Miller, John Lauder, Rab Walker and the writer, entered as "The Burns Unit" return a score of 81.5 from a possible 100 (not bad). Unfortunately, the score at the next quiz on the 13th dropped to 70.5 when Godfrey Bedford replaced David Miller but that was entirely coincidental. On the third session on 20th Feb. Neil Johnston stood in for Rab Walker and the score lept up to 73.5 but the team fell by the wayside on the final session on the 27th when the score plummeted to 61.5 but the questions then were more obscure and the competition stiff. The last team was John Lauder, Ted Murray Derek Rogerson and the writer. Questionmaster Mark Jardine announced to some hilarity that the team from the Howff Club got a Burns question wrong by answering that the first recorded Burns Supper in the cottage at Alloway was held in 1805. The correct answer being 1801.  OK, so I was 4 years out. No big deal!

The cumulative score for "The Burns Unit" was 287 and we finished in the upper half of the Leader Board.  I would like to express admiration for David Miller's incisive grasp of recondite concepts which was invaluable. The encylopedic knowledge of popular culture (modern music) displayed by Rab Walker, Neil Johnston and Derek Rogerson was beyond price and the quiet erudition of Godfrey Bedford, Ted Murray and John Lauder betrayed a classical education and maintained the club' reputation for excellence. I can say with some modesty that my own contribution was not without merit.

The Quiz raised £2500 split between the local Menengitis Trust and the People's Project.

Perhaps next year, the club can find superior brains and improve the score.