Quiz night

On Saturday night I attended a quiz night to raise funds for a local adult learning centre I attend.

It was was bucketing down all day and I had 10 minutes from my previous appointment to give my cat his insulin injection, shower and change and organise myself.

That feeling of rush is a difficult and unwelcome one so I found myself wondering why I committed to the team put forward by our Spanish class “Los Conquiztadores “.

Finding a clever name is all part of the event.

Our class is a friendly one, they often repair to the pub afterwards but I prefer to get back. It was also thought my general knowledge would enhance the team.

Our team captain N has worked all over Europe and is an accomplished linguist.

K was a high flying nurse seconded to the Ministry of health who likes a drink. She married her gardener (‘Mellor’? as in Lady Chatterley’s lover) and there is an obese, intelligent lady whom I like best of all.

There is also a ditzy woman who always turns up late, the sort that has got through life with her good looks whilst messing others around and the polar opposite of my p/a Polly who is as reliable as a Swiss watch.

Needless to say Ms Ditzy having said she would turn up with an expert on pub quizzes and for whom the nurse brought a hat in red as that was our team colour did not appear so we were one light.

There were 6 topics; geography, art and literature, showbiz, science, history and miscellaneous.

I would say the questions were more specialist than general knowledge. Rather infuriatingly K, who was by this stage tipsy, overruled my answers e.g. I had the name of one invention, the lawnmower, for which she substituted Hoover – which had to be wrong as Hoover was invented by …er …Hoover.

Had we struck to our original and correct answers we might have won. One question we debated was which Tory Prime Minister died in the 1990s. The obese lady thought Ted Heath and I Alec Douglas Home but we were both wrong: it was Stanley Baldwin. [Is this right? Wikpedia says he died in 1947 – ED].

As the evening went on the teams got more competitive when one lady knew the answer she screeched to the quizmaster “No clues! No clues!”

There is always a market in competitive cleverness. Years ago the yuppie generation took Trivial Pursuits to their rented villas in Provence and Chianishire.

Now it’s the pub quiz. But this does not denigrate it. At £10 per entrant to include a glass of wine and some bread and cheese, it was hardly expensive.

Above all it raised money for a most worthwhile institute that enhances lives, particular for the aged and widowed.