Sloggers & Betters York 2023

This weekend was the annual Sloggers & Betters event organised by John Henderson.

This one coincided with a special event for John - his 60th Birthday. To celebrate he invited us all to Bishopthorpe Sports and Social Club where we had a great evening on Friday. Not only was there plenty of beer (and other drinks) and the usual quiz, but there was a super buffet meal and live entertainment from a 7-piece rhythm and blues band.

I had Dawn along with me for the weekend and also, as a last minute extra, Sarah, who we had brought with us to view some rental properties in York on Friday and go on a caving trip yesterday. Along with Tom Reynolds (my old boss at British Gas in 1985-7. who sets crosswords under the name Kruger) and John Dunleavy, a fellow Discord Crossword Central member, we took up a table and became one of the quiz teams.

Here are a few of photos, including a couple of John's.

Puzzling over the quiz questions. We didn't do very well being one of the 5 (of 12) teams who failed to finish).

Empty plates.

We had our own bar area. The beers included Nimrod IPA, a collaboration between Oakham Ales and Elusive Brewing. Tom wondered if John had got a beer renamed for the event - Nimrod is one of John Henderson's setting pseudonyms), but John told me it wasn't, although it was quite tricky getting a barrel of it for the event as it i only brewed in the summer. It was very tasty and my beer of the evening. John told me yesterday that we managed to drink it all among us.

We were seated in two rows of tables with the table for the buffet in the middle. Serious heads down on the quiz here.

John Dunleavy in thinking mode.

The ladies were invited to take from the buffet first.

Then came the band Fast Eddie’s Blues Band who, I'm told,  played most of  the tracks on The Blues Brother album.

They were later joined by a singer to do a number of Elvis songs.

John gave a little speech thanking us all for coming... but thank-you John for a great evening do!

We even had some dancing along to the band once the buffet had been cleared away.

A great night out!

Yesterday morning I took Sarah to meet her caving buddies for 8am and after Dawn had headed off to the Designer Outlet to do some shopping, I had a little walk before going to the Fox & Roman, our traditional Saturday venue, for the day. On the way I found York Railway pond. looking rather autumnal.

The business of the day was a pile of crosswords. Here is John tackling one.

There was more beer too, of course.

We took over most of the pub. Here are some at the far end from us.

The lunch was chilli and rice, with both beef and vegetarian options..

 

We spent some time cracking John Henderson's clever crossword under his Elgar pseudonym for the event, which turned out to be based on the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch. Very entertaining.

Apart from John and myself, there were three other members of Crossword Central there - here are Kitty, mc_rapper and BeeryHiker in conversation.

This time I didn't join the stragglers at the end of the day to go for a curry, instead going back to our hotel to meet Dawn and watch the rugby. Sarah was dropped off at the hotel at about midnight and we set off home early this morning to beat the queue at the roadworks north of Doncaster, getting home in less than 3 hours.

A great get together. I was good to meet up again with other crossword lovers and setters. Thanks to John Henderson for organising it all! You can read Kenmac's post about it on fifteensquared here.