On Wednesday 26th November, we braved the traffic to make it Hollywood Bowl at Rochester, for our 2025 Christmas Night Out. In a change from the norm, we decided to keep the competitive spirit going with a night of fun and frolics at ten pin bowling. In all, there were 20 attendees bowling and two who came along for the laughs…I mean chat!

Unfortunately, the results haven’t been emailed to me so I am unable to crown an overall champion. However, I can report that back that Dave was not lying when he said he is no good at sports with a ball…Rohan, surprisingly for a youngster was awful, but seemed to improve as the night went on and, after he’d had a few drinks (maybe seeing 20 pins instead of 10 helped him aim better for something!), the juniors had no staying power – with two or three of them scoring 100+ on the first game, they came to a grinding and, somewhat embarrassing halt on round 2, the ‘hustle’ of the night must surely be from Donna, who claimed never to have done bowling before, but looked like she’d be taking lessons in the run up (and judging by Mark’s score, the lessons weren’t from Mark!), Jacquie took a tumble into the next lane (and that was pre-drinks!) but still managed to score handsomely, so maybe it was technique she should have stuck with and finally, the piece de resistance was the goodie bag of homemade seasonal biscuits – chocolate pudding biscuit, rudolf the reindeer gingerbread, as well as a bauble decorated and star gingerbread and finishing with a candy cane too! For many of us, we should probably have used the ‘bumpers’ just to get ‘a score’, but the star of the show must be Steve, who went all out and even wore the correct style shoes!

There was a suggestion of axe throwing or rage room for next year, but as we were all exhausted and headed home at the end of the bowling, bowing out of drinks and a chat and, the fact that we’re all another year older, maybe we’ll just take it easy with drinks or a meal out again!

Thank you to all those who came and thank you for a lovely evening out. Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a very happy, healthy and prosperous 2026.

Lanes 1 & 2 admiring the current bowler’s ability…or not! The juniors had whizzed through their games and were now running amok among the arcade games and proving they were equally as poor at the pool table as they were at the bowling – hence no photo!

Three consecutive shots of Rohan, on the same go, just to prove how much better he was post a few drinks. As you can see, he actually got some pins down at this point of the night!

Steve (aka Uncle Albert on the scoreboard – that’s what happens when you turn up late!), modelling the correct attire.

“These old things…I just found them at the back of the wardrobe.”