The Week Ahead

I'm off out in about half an hour. Last week John and I found another Sunday quiz that we quite liked, in Bridgend, which is brilliant news, because we made up our minds some time ago not to go to the Twelve Knights more than once a fortnight. Now, we don't win every time we play, but we've won the majority, and by quite large margins in a few cases. So rather than court displeasure, or even outright hostility, we invoked our time honoured once a fortnight rule, which has served us well in the past. We decided to jettison the previous pub we alternated with the knights because a) although home made, there had been a succession of , erm, not great quizzes (and I quote what was said to me - No you cannot have a point for listing San Marino as a country which has a border with Italy, mate, because it does not.)b) The landlady asked me to compile a quiz for the pub. Look, I do feel bad about this, especially after my comments in this very blog praising pubs that avoid buying in quizzes and make their own, but . . . oh, what's the point in lying about it, I just didn't want to do it for them.I don't want to get precious about this, but the people in the quiz, as nice as they are, are none of them quizzers, and writing the kind of quiz to work in that venue would be a chore. Well, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

As it is, this coming Thursday is my first turn to do the quiz for the rugby club for what seems like quite a long time. I'm grateful to Brian for this. What with the French Trip, and the GCSE controlled assessments marking, moderation and sample to sort out - my first time as Subject Leader - I would always have been struggling for time. Yesterday I put a few hours in, and it's ready. I can't vouch for the quality, but it's the best I could do at the time. I'll let you know how it goes down on Thursday. Speaking of which, it's been a pleasure this year that we seem to be more competitive down the club than we've been for a couple of years. For example, last week Brian of ours was question master, and Lemurs were missing Terry, one of their star players, and we won fairly well. Even this week, when Lemurs had what I think was a full team, though I can't be sure, and even though we were short of Brian, question master again, and John we managed to keep the margin of defeat down to a couple of points. As a consequence, with this kind of competition I'm irresistibly reminded of my early years at the club in the mid 90s, where we used to go head to head every week with a formidable team of John, and my dear old mate Allan, and Doug, who also sadly passed away a couple of years ago. When I started they would win a good 7 out of every 10 quizzes, but we got better, and it got closer, and a win against the boys was enough to keep a smile on my face for most of the next week.

Tomorrow is the first Monday since early January that I have no League or Cup game in Bridgend to go to. I won't lie, it makes a bit of a hole in my quizzing schedule, but at least there is the prospect of starting going to Newport again. Nobody does a quiz quite like Trevor Parry - I just wish Newport was about half an hour closer.

Wherever you're playing, have a good week yourself.