Taking my Turn

I used to do it for a long time. When I started doing it, it was pure pleasure. I found I helped relieve the stress that had built up at work over the week. It wasn’t harming anyone else, either. Over time, though, it seemed t become more of a chore. The pleasure I got out of doing it was still there while I was actually doing it, but it didn’t last as long afterwards. I’d soon find myself becoming unsatisfied again. So I made myself stop doing it. In all honesty, I haven’t missed doing it at all in the last 18 months or so. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, last Thursday, I did it again.

Yes, of course I’m talking about volunteering to set the quiz in the rugby club.

During the lockdown which began last December, I set a zoom quiz for the staff at work, but this was because I was asked to – I didn’t suggest it. But I believe that the last quiz I set for the rugby club was the New Year quiz in January 2020.

What I said about losing the pleasure in it was certainly true. I also felt that I was stale. I’d been taking regular turns setting the quiz for 25 years, and in all honesty I felt as if I was just going through the motions. A lot of the questions I was setting were questions I’d asked many times before. Then there was what happened when I went to the quiz when it started up again in the summer of 2020. We’d been sat down for about five minutes when the steward sent Dai Norwich, the current organiser, to tell us to buy a drink or get out. Now, as it was, we’d only just sat down. But what really got me was that I had been setting the quiz in the club for over 2 decades, always willing to fill in when nobody else was coming forward, for no more than a couple of diet cokes in the evening – often not even bothering with that. A previous chairman of the Social Club told me confidentially back in the late 90s that a low estimate of the amount of money the quiz was bringing into the club – even considering that there’s no entry fee – was £10,000 a year. So when Dai was forced to say this, I felt – right, that’s the last quiz you’re getting out of me for the foreseeable future.

Well, you can’t stay mad forever.

When we started attending the quiz again a couple of months ago, I did tell Dai that I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to start being question master again. Well, the last week in October was half term week in school. Or not in school, if you see what I mean. On the Friday, a connection question occurred to me. So did another. Now, time was when this was quite a regular occurrence for me. When I was really into it a decade or two ago, almost anything could stop me in my tracks and make me think – that could make a good quiz question. But what wih my bout of depression, my disillusionment, and my semi-retirement from quizzing, I lost that. So it was a bit of a surprise to find it suddenly happening again. Hm – thought I – I wonder if I could get eight connections? – eight being the number of rounds in the quiz. I did just that, and felt ridiculously pleased with myself for doing so. I started gathering other questions as well. As it stands I’m just over a dozen short of the 80 questions needed for a quiz, but that’s really not a huge amount to find.

I did think twice before volunteering to put it before the public, and I spoke to my team about it as well. I did wonder if they’d say that they’d give it a miss, but I was rather touched by the way that they said they are definitely going to play. I was rather touched when I offered to do the quiz in a few weeks time, and Dai replied that a number of people had asked when I was going to be doing a quiz again. Granted, that might have been ‘when is he doing a quiz again so I can be away that week’, but Dai’s tone suggested otherwaise, and that’s how I choose to take it.

So does that mean my quiz rehabilitation will be complete? Well, hold your horses a moment. I’m still only attending one quiz a week regularly, and I’ve no wish to expand this, certainly for the time being. I’m only setting the one quiz – I shan’t be going back to taking a regular turn , and won’t even do it again if I don’t get inspiration like what led to this one. Slow and steady seems to be the way to go for me – it needs to be about pleasure, not pressure. (I just made that up – feel free to use it in conversation.)

I’ll let you know how it went by the end of the month. If I don’t say anything about it, well, you can draw your own conclusions from that.