Last Sunday evening I went to play in a pub quiz in Pontardawe with an old friend who was my Head of Department for many years. There were two of his friends I had never met before on the same team, and a pleasure to make their acquaintance it was. By the end of the quiz, after we had won by what is commonly known as a country mile they asked me how I become ‘so good at quizzes’. Their words, not mine. This is what I told them.
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“I gave several indications of my precocity when only a
small child. As I approached adolescence my father one night took me on his
knee (he only had the one following a drunken accident with a chainsaw and a
tub of Swarfega.) “Derek,” he said, for alas, he could never remember my name, “Derek,
I have now taught you everything I know.” This was true. He had done it earlier
that evening during one of the ad breaks in Coronation Street. “It is now time
for you to learn from people who know even more than I do.” I asked him if he could
narrow down the field a little bit, and he replied, “You must go and seek
wisdom in the mystic East, my son.”
I was worried that my leaving would be the excuse for an emotional
scene. As it was, though, my father would not be part of it. He had originally promised
to accompany me but he went back into the house in a huff when the cork fell out
of his luggage. As for my mother, she favoured me with a single grunt,
stoically stemming the tide of tears as she struck a match against the side of
her hobnailed boot and lit her meerschaum, before walking back into the house
and slamming the door. I strode off, Dick Whittington-like, with my meagre possessions
bundled together in a large snotty handkerchief, and didn’t stop until I
reached the Mystic East.
Unfortunately when I got there Clacton was crap.
The old drunken fool obviously meant for me to go even further
East. And so I did. I got very wet until a kindly soul pointed out to me that
it would be much easier in a boat.
Many were the lands I travelled through on my quest for
knowledge over the next few years. Many were the people I offered to entertain
with my Winston Churchill Striptease routine in return for a warm bed and a
hearty meal. I still look back fondly on these times as ‘the starvation years’.
In time I came to India and began to ascend the foothills of the Himalayas. I
climbed, after a fashion until I reached my goal, a lonely Buddhist Monastery
perched in lofty isolation upon the dizzying heights of the Tibetan Plateau. A weatherbeaten
wooden sign advised me on how to approach the monastery with the appropriate degree
of respect, and so I walked the path on my knees, with my shins and feet being
shredded by the shards of terracotta embedded within. Finally reaching the
gateway I spun the venerable prayer wheel reverently and rang the holy ganta
once. Several hours later, so it seemed, an ancient and wizened monk shuffled up
to the portal, all the while showering benevolences upon my head with these
words of blessing – “Ootheyellareyoo” and “Waddyellyerwant”.
The monks of sacred knowledge, it is fair to say, were
suspicious of western travellers who came knocking on their portal, even those
like me who came with respect and bleeding shins. They did not immediately
accept my request to become a novice at face value. Indeed, they insisted that
I spend six weeks as a toilet roll holder in an outside lavatory before
allowing me to don the robe of a novice.
Even when I was accepted into the monastery life was not
easy. The monks themselves could hardly be called good company. All of them
were men of few words, most of them suffixed with – off. As for the novice
masters, they taught through the method of negative reinforcement. Every day
they tested our knowledge in viciously complicated quizzes, where every incorrect
answer was rewarded with a severe thrashing with volumes of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica. Insult to injury was added when we had to write a 600 word essay
thanking the masters for the thrashing afterwards.
As the weeks and months passed I couldn’t help noticing
that our numbers were thinning out. The punishments for incorrect answers, or
failure to recall correct ones became more severe. The rumour among the frightened
monks was that those who disappeared had faced the punishment of being forced
to climb the highest shelf in the monastery’s great library with iron balls
chained to their ankles. If they survived the climb they were ordered to recite
the complete works of Marcel Proust while juggling three burning lunar globes. Monks
with less imagination said they were shot.
After several years the few among us who had survived the
brutality of our novicehood were told to prepare to make our vows, by which we
might join the sacred siblinghood of knowledge. Where Christian Monks make vows
of poverty, chastity and obedience, we would be asked to make two vows, of
smugness and curmudgeonliness. Being quizzers it was felt that chastity went
along with the deal anyway. Ah, but there was a catch. For once we were
accepted into the brotherhood we would never be allowed to leave the monastery
again. We would be chained to computer desks, generating content for online
encyclopaedias, answering queries for search engines of the time and compiling
sets of questions for one of the UK’s best known quiz companies. With a heavy
heart I came to the conclusion that such a life could never make me happy and
escaped from the monastery by bribing the abbot with a copy of the first
edition of the A to Z of Almost Everything.
Many were the hazards and obstacles I faced on my long
journey home, too many to recount. My knowledge of Olympic Games trivia, Greek Mythology
and the Periodic Table did not protect me much from the elements nor furnish me
with the means to defend my person or obtain a square meal. But I survived and
eventually fetched up at the house I grew up in, the house where my parents
doubtless had waited years for news of me. I expected a tearful reunion. And I
shall never forget my mother’s words as she caught sight of my weatherbeaten
face for the first time in so many years. “Oh, it’s you, fartface. I ‘ope you’ve
already ‘ad yer tea.”
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It must be said that my story did not lead my new friends
to gaze at me with new found respect. After some moments’ silence they asked,
“Really?”
“No,” I replied, “Of course not. I’ve just got a good
memory, watch a lot of quizzes, play in a lot of quizzes and read a lot.”
It’s not rocket science, you know.
