BEER AND CAROLS 4

"Isn't this usually a meat raffle?" I said, turning to the vicar. 

"You must be a regular!" he joked. 

I don't know whether or not going to the same place once every year and doing the same thing, counts as 'regular' but there I was, once again watching a raffle unfold at this year's Beer and Carols.

"Oh I don't believe it!" said the caller, waving his winning ticket. He'd won the prize turkey. Cries of 'fix' resounded around the sports-and-social-club. Fix or not, he slipped the ticket into his back pocket and checked with 'Chunky' that he could bring the van round and pick it up.

Beer and Carols is one of those things that a local church is trying to do, and for four years in a row now, I've helped them out by playing the keyboard for them. It's always a rowdy giggle, as patrons sing along and I try to guess which verse is the last in this particular version.

For reasons I never understood, the club members also use the evening to raffle off some meat. Or this year, wine, chocolates, vouchers-for-a-cut-and-blow-dry (won by a man with no hair of course), a turkey that needed to be taken home in Chunky's van, oh, and the big prize of £250 in an A5 white envelope.

"The big one then," said the caller, his voice distorting in the microphone. "Three, four... nine, two. Three four nine two, who is that?"

A crackled silence. It turned out to be him.