Earlier this month, 36 eager badminton fanatics descended upon Finsbury leisure centre at 10am for the 8 hour badminton marathon that is the annual Finsbury Badminton Club tournament.  Armed with badminton rackets, vast quantities of food, Conor’s amazing computer programme and a kettle, players across both sections of the club battled it out over 6 rounds of mixed and ladies’/men’s doubles.  Emerging at the top of the Swiss ladder were:

Mixed: Anita and Dan
Ladies: Anita and Juliane
Men: Christian and Mark E

The day did not end at the badminton however, as the gang moved on to the Grand Union bar for the Christmas party.  After a few drinks, some pizza, burgers and a quiz (did we ever  find out who won??) , we gave out the second most important set of prizes for the day:  the Shabby Shuttlecocks awards.  In the run up to the tournament, members have been voting for who they think is the Best Dressed player, Nicest smelling, most likely to hit you with a shuttlecock and the person with the best facial hair (to name but a few awards!).  We also celebrated Pete’s birthday by honouring him with a lifetime achievement award and a more traditional birthday gift of cake.

Happy Birthday Pete!

Soon after that, we somehow ended up playing a battle of the sexes game of “picking up a cardboard box off the floor using only your teeth”, limbo and also a dance-off.  Perhaps the less said about this part of the day the better.  For photographic evidence, please ask Jamie, who has enough material to blackmail all of us approximately 10 times over (especially Billy and Steve).

Congratulations to the various winners and well done to everyone who took part in such a fun, well organised and thankfully injury-free day!

Earlier this week, Conor kindly invited us round for board games, pizza and homemade apple pie.  A bunch of us descended  on his flat, eagerly hoping to win the ultimate prize: badminton-related key rings, courtesy of Anita.  Our arena of battle: Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It.  For anyone unfamiliar with this latest reincarnation of Trivial Pursuit, it involves the chance to bet on whether your fellow contestants will get their answer right or wrong and then use your winnings to purchase cheeses.

This led to teams following a variety of strategies: John and Pete; who seemed to concentrate on amassing a huge amount of wealth rather than cheeses, Dan and Conor; who consistently underestimated the general ability of their competitors and bet against them, Tina; “Go big or go home!!!” (nuff said) and Mark and Jamie; our general knowledge boffins who followed a more “purist” strategy of actually answering their questions correctly, and were thus crowned champions of the evening.  Well done chaps, and many thanks to Conor for inviting us and Anita for providing the prizes (as well as our lovely new team t-shirts!)

The season has just finished but here at Finsbury we keep on playing. We still have club nights over summer to make sure some of the lazy players keep fit.