Back where he belongs

I’ve mentioned my friend Brian before. Brian has been the organiser of the Thursday night quiz in Aberavon Rugby club since nineteen hundred and frozen to death . Almost immediately after the New Year quiz, his speciality and the highlight of the quiz year in the club Brian fell ill, and only returned to the club the week that I was in France with the school a fortnight ago. This last Thursday Brian was QM for the first time since he was ill.

Here’s a funny thing. The older I get, the less tolerant I get at work, and in my job that’s not a good thing. I try very, very hard not to let it show, but it is an effort. I have to work at it because it doesn’t come so naturally any more. Yet conversely, the older I get the more tolerant I become of other question masters. I enjoy every quiz at the club now, regardless, so it seems, of who is the QM. To be fair we’ve been very lucky that people have been prepared to help me out while Brian was ill, and I don’t think that there was one duff quiz among them. Still, while I tend to enjoy every quiz in the club there’s nothing like a quiz with a question master who knows just how to put a really good quiz together. Brian gave us such a quiz on Thursday night. On paper it doesn’t look like rocket science – put together some gimmes, some easy ones, some which only the better teams can get, some which only the odd one or two people will get, some which nobody maybe might get, something to make you go ‘ooh, really?’ - in fact , something for everyone. Actually that doesn’t even look all that easy on paper, come to think of it. Well, that’s exactly what Brian gave us on Thursday night. Yes, alright, since you ask, the fact that my team scored highest of all the teams in the actual questions helped my appreciation, no doubt. Still, the fact that we lost the quiz overall because we’re not very good at identifying people in photographs did nothing to put a dampener on the evening, and Brian earned the biggest round of applause at the end that I can remember anyone getting in the club. Quite right too. So glad you’re back, Brian.

In fact, the only downside is that it’s my turn on Thursday, and somehow I have to follow that.