Friendship? No - Destiny.

It is a funny old thing, when you get right down to it. What is? Memory. Facts wise I like to think that I have a better than average memory. Of course, the other side of the coin is that I never (alright, I’m exaggerating, let’s say hardly ever) remember where I’ve put something, even if it was only a couple of minutes ago that I put it down. In fact, I have to make a special effort to take notice while I’m in the act of placing something down and even then there’s no guarantee I will remember it.

But as I say, I don’t think I’m being unnecessarily boastful when I say that I do have a good memory for facts. This extends to quiz questions. When I hear a quiz question, I’ll usually have one of a number of reactions, including –

heard that before a large number of times and the answer is . . .

heard that once or twice before and the answer is . . .

heard that once before and the answer is . . . 

heard that before but I can’t remember the answer. . .

never heard that before but the answer is . . .

never heard that before and I don’t know the answer.

When it’s a question I’ve only once heard before I can often remember which quiz I heard it in and who the question master was. Now, it’s not rare to hear questions the answer to which I do not know (more’s the pity) and it’s not rare to be asked questions I’ve never been asked before. However it is quite a bit rarer to be asked questions which – a) I haven’t been asked before – b) I do not know the answers to – and – c) are really interesting questions that make me think , why haven’t I been asked this before?

Last night in the club the QM was Ann. She’s a very nice lady, but not in my list of favourite question masters. Fair play, though, she came up with this question – the three core principles of the Commonwealth Games are Humanity - Equality – and which other? Now, okay, she did actually say that this was the motto of the Commonwealth games rather than the three core principles, which was wrong because the motto is ‘more in common’. Let that go. I thought to myself , well that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I should have heard before. . . but I honestly don’t think I have. I was clutching at straws a bit, so I thought, well, the Commonwealth Games are known as the Friendly Games, so I put down friendship. The actual answer was Destiny. I don’t mind getting it wrong so much because I think it’s a fair question and because I won’t forget it in a hurry and it’s something to know.

Mind you I got frustrated with her over another question. She asked, “Which is the coldest planet in the Solar System?” Now, I know that it’s Uranus, because a couple of years ago my grandson Ollie asked me the same question. I said Neptune, and he proved to me that it was Uranus. I googled it again when I got home yesterday to be sure. You’d think it should be Neptune, being further from the Sun, but no it’s Uranus. Now, being as Ann had picked the question to ask, I took it for granted she would have the correct answer. What answer did she give? Bloody Neptune. We took the hit for it and still won. But unfortunately this is what we get a lot of the time in the quiz. There are certain question masters who - and I admit I am being mean here - don’t possess the craft, skill or attitude necessary to make a mostly satisfying and enjoyable quiz. I tend to call any quiz they host ‘amateur nights’. They’re marked out by having the odd really great question which you’re really glad to have been asked, and some really quite simple howlers that the QM could have got right if they’d checked the bleeding answer properly.

Not that I’m bitter, you understand.