Friendship Evenings are simply fun events put on by all Clubs in the Region as a means of keeping in touch whilst having an enjoyable social event.

By royal appointment, President Ruth invited all the clubs in our Region over to Garstang for an evening of fun and games and, of course good food – it’s what we’re famous for!

Much effort went into decorating the United Reform Church Hall in suitable red, white and blue bunting, papers chains, balloons, flags and flowers – all ready to greet our guests who had also been asked to come suitably colour co-ordinated.

Guests were greeted at the door with a glass of something suitably fizzy, before heading to their tables to partake in a buffet supper. As usual, our hospitality committee came up trumps with a wonderful array of sandwiches, pies, sausage rolls and of course – lots of cakes and puddings!

During our meal, we started the evening’s entertainment – a quiz. President Ruth had created an interesting selection of questions on Royal jewels and the Olympics – in line with the theme of our evening. Boy! She didn’t make it easy – we sure had to think hard and guess a lot!!!! The noise level in the hall sure did rise as we all racked our rusty brains to remember the order of and countries in which the games had taken place.

As we came to the end of the meal, a beautiful cake decorated with the Union Jack came around – you’d be surprised at how much cake can be eaten when you try hard enough. Then came the answer to the quiz questions – gosh, the number of groans that kept emanating gave a good clue to how the teams had done.

Then President Ruth really made us work for our suppers!  Charades based on jewels and the Olympics.  Here we found a world champion athlete in the person of the Mayor of Garstang Sandra Perkins, who was simply on fire – guessing some quite obscure mimes!  Much laughter followed as we all desperately tried to produce the answers

Finally, our adjudicator, Hazel, tallied up the scores from the quiz and charades to name the winning team.  The team made their way to the front of the hall, where they received their gold medals from President Ruth.  We all then stood and, accompanied by a recording of the Coldstream Guards, gave a resounding rendition of God Save the Queen.

A good night was had and all went home happy and full!