Me and My Big Mouth

Forgive me Trevor, for I have sinned.


Newport again On Monday, and with a full team as well. I have to say that with Gordon, George, Allan, Barry and myself in the team, Trevor might well have been fully justified in giving out another set of supergenerous head starts again. However, Herbie's team beat us by 9 last week - even after you take off the 5 point head start that's still a 4 point win. They started off scratch on Monday. The Harriers beat us by 7 last week, off a larger handicap. However they had 2 top 50 nationally ranked quizzers in Richie and Mark ( at least for the start of the quiz ) so they started off scratch. Misfits combined forces with another team from Caerphilly, so they had a smaller head start than last week - 4 or 5 I think. Martin's team were the only team we beat last week, so they had an even bigger head start of 20.

After the first round, much of Martin's headstart had already been eaten up, as had the Misfits/Caerphilly. Trevor made a comment about getting the handicaps wrong. So then I opened my big mouth, I can't remember the exact words, but it was something along the lines of
"That's the only time that you've ever got it right. "
Now, if you're a regular reader you'll know how much the handicap system has annoyed and frustrated me over the past 9 months or so. However, the venom with which it came out was, on reflection, out of order, and I know that Trevor was upset by it. Comments were made along the lines of it would be down to me to set the handicaps next week, and then I would see how easy it was, and how much I'd like it- ie the rest of the teams would crucify me. Which is doubtless true, although its missing the point, which is, if it really was down to me, then I would not give any headstarts at all. Doubtless they really would not just verbally, but also physically crucify me for that.

What made it worse, was that this was actually a hard quiz. A great, hard quiz. The kind of quiz where large handicaps would have been justifiable. Which means either Trevor took pity on us after our showing last week, and gave out small or non existent handicaps for that reason, or he genuinely thought that this was an easier quiz than last week. I can't see that he would have thought this, though. You can't be as good at putting sets of questions together as Trevor is, and not realise whether its an easier or a harder quiz.

I made a dick of myself a couple of years ago with a comment I made to Mark Labbett, which was totally out of order, and then I didn't actually get to see him again for about 4 months before I could apologise to him, an apology which, I might add, he accepted with huge grace . The worst thing is that at the end of the quiz Trevor announced that Martin would be doing the quiz next Monday. Now, Martin is a very nice fellow, and he loves his quiz, but his quiz is not up to the standard of Trevor's. Not to put too fine a point on it, in the past it hasn't really proven worth the effort of driving all the way to Newport and back. So it will be a fortnight at least before I see Trevor and can apologise to him face to face. I don't like the handicaps, and I have to accept that I'm never going to like them either, but that kind of nastiness was wrong, and that kind of comment was out of order.

In case you're wondering, yes we did win, by as comfortable a margin as we were beaten by last week. And no, it really didn't make me feel any better about myself.