Quiz in Aberdare

What, me? No, I don’t. I’ve done it once in the last five years, and that was a couple of years ago. Hey, stop that. Wash your minds out with soap. What I mean is going to a new quiz I haven’t played in before, as a ringer.

I wasn’t planning to do so on Tuesday night, either. This is how it all came about. A few weeks ago my middle daughter Zara moved to Aberdare where she was moving in with her partner Matt. On Tuesday afternoon she rang up Jess and asked if her and Dan wanted to go to try out a quiz in Zara and Matt’s. Poor old Dan is suffering from a nasty cold at the moment, and he’s trying to make sure he is well enough to come to the quiz tonight. I hope so. It won’t be the same without him. Jess doesn’t drive, so to cut a long story short she asked if I wanted to go.

Now my answer should probably have been – lovely idea, but not on a school night. There was a time when I could get to bed as late as 11:30 on a school night and be fine for a day’s teaching afterwards. Not now. I figured out quite a few years ago now that this particular kite ain’t going to fly no more. Or to put it another way, I need to be in bed by 10:30 on a school night, and 10 pm is even better. It’s one reason why I stopped going to the rugby club. Then they moved the start earlier, and away we went.

However, it is a long time – probably a couple of years – since I played in a quiz which is completely new to me. And what can I tell you – I fancied having a go. So off we went. Now, it may be that you’re not familiar with Aberdare. With the state of the road network between Neath and Aberdare being in a bit of a state of flux at the moment, it currently takes about 40 minutes to get there from Port Talbot. It’s worth going, because the centre of Aberdare really is rather charming. (Cut the travelogue and tell us about the quiz, Dave.)

So the quiz started at 8:30 in the Bute Arms in Aberdare. Lovely pub. I think that the question master probably put it together himself. We began with 5 in the news questions, then 15 general knowledge. Then a music round of 15 questions took us to half time. I have to be honest, I thought that the QM did a good job with the music round, having pop questions a few of which went back as far as 1960, and even a couple on classical music.

By half time we had 29 out of 35. The QM announced the scores from 5^th upwards. Third place was on about 19. Then he announced the second place team were on 28. This caused them a little bit of consternation. Jess went to the bar to get a round, and one or two of them gave her a wee bit of an inquisition. Jess is a bit of an old hand at this game now, and she gave them the ‘no, we just had a couple of lucky guesses (we didn’t, there was no luck involved in them at all) we’ll probably crash and burn in the second half’ you know the sort of thing. Obviously I don’t know, but I’d guess that judging by their score they probably win every week and aren’t used to facing a real challenge.

After the break then, round four consisted of 15 on Film and TV. We took 14. Then the QM announced that this week’s ‘guest’ round was – drum roll please – food and drink. Apparently the first four rounds are always the same category but the last could be anything, it changes each time. It really isn’t our best subject, but thankfully many of them were obvious or were old quiz stagers and we took 12. Which gave us a grand total of 29 and 25 for 54.

The QM lost a little of my sympathy for drawing out the announcing of the results. After all we all knew it was a two-horse race. The third placed team’s score was announced – low 40s I think. Then in second, with 50 and a half points, the team which we had christened The Hairy Bikers. Alright, we didn’t know if they actually were bikers, but they were certainly hairy enough. So we had won. Which meant that Zara and Matt now have a tab behind the bar of £40 to spend howsoever they wish.

I can kind of see why the hairy ones were upset, which they were. After all, it’s a heady thing is being the top dog in the quiz in your own backyard, and you get used to it. When a team comes from nowhere and knocks you off your perch at the first attempt it can be hard to take, especially if you’ve already mentally spent the £40 prize. It can make you start questioning the legitimacy of the winners’ performance. Now, we were in plain sight of all the other teams and the QM for the whole quiz so they could all see that we weren’t using phones. I have to say though, the way that one of the Bikers bellowed at the QM “What was their score ? WHAT WAS THEIR SCORE ?!” was not in the best traditions of sportsmanship.

We had a brief chat with the question master before we left. He said how nice it was to have a new team come, and said he hoped we’d come again. Oh dear. There’s no way that I could do this again during term time. Honestly, I was like a dishrag all Wednesday – and not in a good way either. It was just gone 11pm when I got back, and I’ve been paying for it since. Not only that though. Even if it was an option, I know what would happen if we did start coming on a regular basis. I’m not saying that we would win every week. I think we’d probably win enough though that within a few weeks the comments about ‘only come here for the quiz’ ‘bloody quiz professionals’ and the like would start, and a really rather nasty atmosphere would develop. I’m not just saying this, it is something I’ve had too much experience of over the last few years.

So there we are. A one off it will remain. Thanks Bute Arms, but trust me, it’s better that it ends this way for both of us, in the long run.