Never On Sunday . . . at the moment, at least.

It’s early days for me yet, I’m sure you can appreciate that. It’s just over a month since I returned to the rugby club quiz, after all. This being Sunday, I was just a little while ago patting myself on the back for having just completed all of this weekend’s planning and marking. I got into the habit of making sure that all of my homework was done before the end of Sunday afternoon to leave the evening clear for Sunday quizzing.

It’s been quite a few years since I packed in going out on a Sunday, but let’s say 4 or 5 years ago it was a bad Sunday when I didn’t have a quiz to go to. I’ll be honest, while I could find something to enjoy about most of them, none of the Sunday quizzes I ever went to were as good as the Thursday night quiz in the rugby club, but that didn’t matter too much, since the Sunday quiz was usually a nice way to end the weekend, and set you up for the trials and tribulations of the coming week.

I can’t say it has crossed my mind to start looking for a Sunday quiz again now. As I said, it’s early days, and to be honest, the memory of why I chucked in the Sundays is too clear. It was at least partly internal – I was taking it all far too seriously and putting too much pressure on myself to win when winning really didn’t matter. I can admit that now, and it pretty much drained most of the pleasure away from the quiz. Also, when John and I would find a quiz we actually liked, it never seemed to last for very long. Either the pub would stop doing it entirely, or move the quiz to a time which just couldn’t work for us. Then there were those where, after a few weeks, either the host, or some of the other teams, or both would make it clear that they didn’t really want you there. Whatever the case, coming home feeling pee’d off was not worth leaving the house for, so I stopped.

So, at the moment, I’m going to keep my Sunday evening a quiz free zone. I’ve got to the stage where I’m enjoying the Thursday nights at the rugby club now – although I’m not ready to start taking my turn as question master again. To be honest, I don’t know when, or if I ever will. When I started in 1995, I enjoyed being the QM as much as playing in the quiz, and for over 20 years I regularly took my turn. So why not now? Well, although I’m resolved to be more laid back about quizzing, I still have some fairly entrenched views, and one of these is that you shouldn’t set the quiz unless you’re prepared to take on the responsibility of a) making it as interesting as possible – b) making it as appropriate to your regular teams as possible and c) making it as accurate as possible. Well, doing this takes time, and I’m not quite prepared to give the time to it that it needs. Not yet. I plead my 20+ years of taking my turn in mitigation, your honour.