Forgive and Forget

Look, it’s like this. I was going to post yesterday, only it was the first really beautifully sunny Saturday for several weeks, so I went out for a butterfly walk. Pretty successful too. In an hour I saw ringlets, speckled woods, a meadow brown, a comma, large whites and small whites. The ringlets were a pain in the bottom because the little sods wouldn’t stop and settle on a branch of a plant to give me half a chance to identify them, until I was almost at the end of my walk. The comma, on the other hand, settled obligingly on the path right in front of me, and spread its wings out so there could be no mistake. Okay, I was only out for about an hour and a half, but then I wanted to work on a watercolour painting of a trolleybus as well – as you do.

Still, here we are, so let’s get on with it, shall we? For me, the issue of the week was a dilemma. You see, in the heat of battle, as it were, you can end up saying or doing things that you’re not proud of. Hard as it may be to believe, I must admit to you all that there have been times when I have acted like a cock in a quiz. My attitude and that of the very forbearing people who play in the rugby club seems to be that it’s better to wipe the slate clean and start afresh each new quiz. I can only recall one particular apology that I felt moved to make about my behaviour in a quiz after the event, and funnily enough it was to Mark Labbett, the famous ITV Chaser, although he was still maybe a year or so away from that particular stage of his quiz career at the time. Likewise, when I think someone else, or another team have acted in a similar way, I might well privately think less of them, and might well, moan about them within my team for, um. . . ever afterwards, but I won’t actually say anything and will maintain a polite face and manner towards them.

However.

It was Jessica’s turn to set the quiz in the rugby club this week. In case you’re not a regular to the blog- and you’re very welcome if you’re a new reader – Jess is my youngest daughter. Now, she acted as question master a few weeks ago and did a bloody good job of it too. When she finished the quiz she was quite upset because two members of one of the teams kept up a running commentary along the lines of ‘why is she going so fast? What is she asking that for? Etc. etc.’ It's a strange quirk of the venue that when you sit on the small platform with the QM's desk you can hear pretty much everything that the teams are saying to each other. The fact that it was a very good quiz which went down very well with all of the other teams was completely overshadowed. So when she came round to making the quiz she had actually made up her mind that if it happened again on Thursday, she would not be question master again.

So much so that I was wondering whether I should have a word with the players involved. This would not be my natural inclination, bearing in mind that although having played in the same quiz against them for over a quarter of a century I don’t recall ever exchanging more than a very few words with them. But Jess is my little girl. Okay, she’s 28 years old, but that’s not the point.

In the end, Jess spoke to Dai Norwich (so called because a) his name is David, and b) he lived in Norwich for many years and his first few quizzes at the club had a significant proportion of questions about Norwich in them) Jess made the decision that she would announce at the start of the quiz that if people wanted her to slow down, or repeat any of the questions, they only had to say. After that, had there been any repeat of what happened last week, then she would alert Dai and he would speak to the players involved. Jess also announced that she was very nervous about the quiz, and with good reason. There were 8 teams playing on Thursday evening. The usual pre-lockdown number was 6, The post lockdown number is usually five, and even before lockdown, 8 would have been an exceptional number of teams.

She needn’t have worried about it. It was every bit as good as her previous quiz, with some lovely connections. I suppose that the icing on the cake was that the two players in question made a point of coming up to her at the end and thanking her for the quiz, saying how much they enjoyed it. Shame they couldn’t have done that after the previous one, still, in the words of Basil Fawlty ‘Forgive and forget. God knows how, the bastards.’