Cotswold Aero Club

The evening of Saturday 9th February saw an ever-growing group of people crowding into the clubroom for the Cotswold Aero Club annual quiz.  A buzz of excited anticipation was in the air and the competitive spirit already showing through as those who arrived early took advantage of 'extra time' to begin identifying the aerial photos.  Those who were walking around with Bottlang flight plans trying to match them up to the airfields shall remain nameless! 

For last year's winning team of course, the quiz had begun weeks ago as one of the so-called 'prizes' for winning is to dream up the next year's quiz!  So after an extremely arduous evening in the pub in early January, we got as far as thinking up a theme for the evening and allocating the writing of the questions for each of the rounds between the four of us.  As one of the quiz masters was Manuel Queiroz, thinking up a suitable theme wasn't too hard - we decided on 'Around the World'  (although if you took part in the quiz you would be forgiven for not having known that, as in the end we forgot to mention it!) and a large number of e-mails later, we had agreed our eight rounds of questions. 

After Richard did a grand job of allocating teams, spaces and names, the quiz got underway, with four rounds before a fabulous meal break (also organised by Richard with help from Graham, Gavin, Joe and Juli) and four rounds after.  Fortunes were varied - after all, we can't all be good at everything! - but the eventual winners took an early lead which they maintained for most of the evening - despite their moaning and complaining about how hard the questions were!   Overall it was amply demonstrated that aviators clearly never read newspapers or listen to Radio 4 (current affairs was the lowest scoring round), know nothing about any mode of transport apart from their own and never indulge in any cultural activity apart from attending the CAC quiz night!  On the other hand, they are not so bad with mouldie-oldie music (by far the highest scoring round), exotic locations and food - no surprise there then!  The prizes for the most inventive answers of the evening had to go to the idea that Michaelangelo was an aircraft designer and that the word 'balti' means 'cheap' in Hindu!  Imaginative creativity however was at its height with the question about avacado pears - only one team had the courage of their convictions enough to write the correct answer - you are a coy lot, after all! 

And if you don't know what that's all about, then you should have been there!  But if you missed it, there's always next year when an equally exciting (and much easier apparently) quiz will be devised and run by the victorious team '27 All That's Left' aka Joe Edwards, ably helped by Alan, Robin and Tony.   Well Done!  Congratulations too to 'Ginge and Ju' who were awarded the newly introduced but soon-to-be-coveted CAC wooden spoons, and finally thanks to everyone for being good sports and making the evening such fun. 

Jill Francis 12 Feb 2008