The Shriek

As I write this on Friday morning, my ears are still ringing from the quiz in the club last night. Now, okay, I have always suffered from tinnitus, so to an extent my ears are always ringing. But suffered isn’t necessarily the best term for it. For as long as I can remember I have always had a noise in the background of my hearing that is a high pitched whine. It’s a bit like the sound of tuning an old fashioned radio with a large dial, or a really high pitched voice going EEEEEEEEEEE. I’m not asking for sympathy because it has never held me back as far as I can tell, and much of the time I never even notice that it’s there.

However, there are certain things which do seem to make it worse. One of which is having a question master in the club who just doesn’t get how to get the best out of using a microphone. I’ve been acting as question master quite regularly in the club for more than 30 years now. Using a microphone is a strangely counter-intuitive activity. Now I’ve finished with teaching, but I was a teacher for so long that when confronted by a large, open space with quite a few people in it listening, my instinct is to take a deep breath and then use my ‘teacher voice’. Which is just the wrong thing to do with a microphone. I find I get best results when I don’t speak above my normal conversational volume and when I pitch my voice just a tiny bit lower.

Okay. Now, the QM last night was one of our semi-regular setters. As a person, I like her. As a QM, well last night was one of her better quizzes, which meant it crept up to being average. For the first 6 out of 8 rounds she split each between 5 questions on one theme and five on another. What can I say? I just wish that the average setter for the club would set their sights on using the best gimmick of all – well phrased general knowledge questions that provide something for the rank amateur, something for the seasoned quizzer and something for all points in between. Learn how to make a good basic quiz before you try pushing the envelope. But as I said, for a themed quiz it wasn’t so bad. Even if she did confuse her John Collins and Tom Collins cocktails, and even if she did fall into the trap of the impromptu bonus. In this care she asked name the two actors from ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum” had a number 1 single in 1975. Then, as an afterthought she added words to the effect of – I’ll give you a bonus if you can name the song. . . I think I remember what it was.- Gawd help us. Thankfully she had it right, but you just shouldn’t ask a question when you haven’t checked the answer first. Thankfully she was right with her answer of Whispering Grass.

I’m getting away from the point here, which is my ringing ears. The big problem with this QM is that she shouts into the microphone. In fact it’s almost a shriek. I, and a couple of others, have started putting our fingers in our ears when she starts, but she carries on, bellowing it out. I’m sorry, but the older I get the more of a wuss I become about loud noises. It’s not really like physical pain, but nonetheless it is painful. Now, whichever way I look at it, I cannot think of a way to broach the subject with the setter in a way which would not come across as unkind, or, let’s face it, downright rude. Which is why I’m sitting here on a Friday morning with my ears ringing.