Expect the Worst. . .

 . . . but hope for the best. It was the Christmas quiz on Thursday evening at the rugby club, and after my curmudgeonly post last week I found myself eating humble pie as part of the Christmas buffet.

For one thing, the trappings I moaned about in last week’s post were absent this year. No elf hats, no chocolate coins for bribing the quiz master, no Elfselfies. Now, I know what you think. You think I’m going to turn round and say that I missed them. Well, you’re wrong. I think that in this case less is most definitely more and that the evening was all the better for it. And the thing is, that when you stop trying to force jollity amongst people, then it does at least create a little space for real jollity.

That’s my feeling on the subject, anyway. On top of that, the setters took the very sensible decision to limit the number of specifically Christmas questions to one per round. At the end of each round we were given a line from the middle of a well known Christmas carol and asked to identify the carol it came from. Well, to anyone who attended Oaklands Middle School in Hanwell iin the early 70s that really wasn’t much of a chore. Our headteacher, Mr. Warden, a truly wonderful man, was Welsh and he was heavily involved in local choirs, and he saw to it that we all sang on a regular basis.

There wasn’t a handout which was probably for the best. I’ve said before on more than one occasion that I don’t really like picture handouts and prefer something more wordy and more cryptic. My son-in-law Dan feels the same way. Having said that, I don’t act as question master very often now and so when I do I usually do a picture handout because I know that lost of the players in the quiz enjoy and prefer it, even though I personally don’t.

This post is in danger of becoming a curmudgeon free zone. I’m not really sure how I feel about that. Much more of this and I’ll be ejected from the International Grumpy Old Sod Club. (I keep my membership card in my wallet, next to the one from Cheapskates Anonymous – or should I say Cheapskates notorious.)But there we are, it was a nice note on which to end the year in the club, and the next quiz will be my quiz of the year on 5^th January.