Coincidence?

Here’s a coincidence. Following Clive Myrie’s excellent debut on Mastermind last Monday, a couple of days ago I felt inspired to write about it on LAM, and combined this with a review of the first of the series. I enjoyed doing that, and so reviewed the latest heat of University Challenge. This led me to start thinking about how long it’s been since I actually played in a quiz, and it must be a year since I last went to the rugby club on a Thursday. Then this morning, as I was unloading Mrs. Londinius’ car after the weekly shop, one of the regular players in the rugby club passed by and asked whether I was thinking about coming back to the quiz again. Hmm, is someone trying to tell me something?

To be fair to Jan, she didn’t ask me why I stopped going. There’s a really simple answer, and a more complicated answer. The simple one is that I just didn’t feel like going any more. As for the more complicated one, well, I don’t want to bore you all over again about my clinical depression, so let’s just say that this was part of it. However, I isn’t just that. I’ve always taken quizzes too seriously, and it was getting so that I really didn’t like the person I was when I was playing in the club and other places. Sorry if that’s a bit heavy. This next bit is going to sound a little arrogant, and I apologise for that too. The finest regular question master for this quiz, my friend Brian, sadly passed away a few years ago, and some of the others who were good enough to take on a regular turn setting the quiz, well, they just weren’t my cup of tea. There were a number of reasons for this – a heavy reliance on gimmicky questions – too many questions where the answer they gave was without doubt wrong – badly phrased questions where it wasn’t clear what was actually being asked for – I’m sure you have an idea of the sort of thing I’m talking about. This made me more bolshie and argumentative, which I didn’t like about myself. Add to this the fact that I’m getting on a bit now, 57, and well into what I think of as the last lap of my teaching career. The quiz always used to start after 9 and often wouldn’t finish before 11:30. I’ve come to accept that if I’m not in bed by 10:30 on a school night, then the next day is going to be a horrible uphill struggle. Now, there’s no guarantee that the next day won’t be a struggle if I am in bed by 10:30, but at least it won’t be my own fault if I am. There are other things I love doing as well as quizzing, which I’ve done more of in the last 3 or 4 years. So I haven’t really missed it.

I did go back to the quiz when it restarted last summer after the first lockdown. It had been shifted to start an hour earlier, which was convenient, and I enjoyed it. I can’t remember why I stopped  - I think that it might have been closed one week due to covid, and I just never started again. Still, having spoken to Jan now, I’ve asked Jess, my daughter, and Dan, my son in law if they fancy it this Thursday, and so who knows – maybe we’ll give it a go. See if the spark is still there.