A Few Odds and Ends

I thought that I had better give fair warning before next weekend. You’ve probably noticed that I’ve been doing most of my posting on a Saturday for the last few weeks. It’s just fitted in better, being a particularly busy time at work. It’s a pain, but it’s the job that puts the food on the table, as it were. Still, next weekend I’m going on the traditional pre Christmas visit to the family in England, and so I’m not going to be able to post much on Saturday. What I will try to do is post in mid-week – Wednesday or Thursday.

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This Thursday just gone was one of those occasions where you lose, yet you are so happy with your own performance that it’s almost as good as winning . I say almost , because I’m being honest. Admitting it doesn’t make it much better, but at least I do admit that I take winning pub quizzes far too seriously. Still, on Thursday night there were two of us in my team, George and myself, and the best team in opposition, ( and to be honest they are the best team that I play against in any regular pub quiz ) Lemurs, had a full team. Rob M. is a serious enough opponent on his own, but add in Terry and the rest and you’ve got a team that really mean business. George and I went behind by a couple of points about halfway through, and I honestly had the feeling that we’d go on to lose a point to them each round, but we played a bit of a blinder and pulled back to be a point behind going into the last round. – With luck – I thought, we might even pull back another point to draw on the questions. Consider my surprise when we found that the guys had their worst round of the night, and we actually won the questions by 2 points. What made it even better was that George only gave me one answer all night. I’d always wondered how I might get on if I played on my own in the club.Alright , I can’t swear to it that I would have reproduced this kind of form if I really had been on my own, but you can’t blame me for thinking that, on that night at least, I might have done. I’ve played on my own in a number of places, and its an interesting experience. Even discounting the answer that George gave me, I would still have won the questions by a point.

Mind you, we were pretty soon brought back down to earth when the handout scores were announced. Lemurs asserted their authority by winning and taking a full 6 points. We came last and got 1 – and that point was probably a sympathy one as well ! So we were beaten fairly comfortably in the end, but what the hell . You have to take pleasure from having one of those nights when you’re hitting the back of the net from all angles – even if it’s not enough to bring you the win.

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I don’t know if you follow Brain of Britain at all. If you don’t, you should give it a try. It’s very good. You can listen to it at any time. If you follow the link in my links section it will take you to the show’s homepage, and you can listen direct . This week the winner was Ian Clark, who was kind enough to leave a comment after the review, which you can read . One of the things Ian said was that he actually played in BoB as long ago as 1977.Unless I’m mistaken he was also a finalist in Mastermind in 1974. I said that I’d be really interested to hear his views on whether the experience of appearing on a show like BoB has changed that much. You have to say as well, a gap of 34 years between appearences has to be some kind of record. Unless of course, you know differently . . .