A Tale of Two Quizzes

Well, it is finally here: the last day of the academic year at the Centre and for me, now, the prospect of some weeks of leisure to catch up with all those little tasks which one has been putting off, as well as to do a bit of travelling and waste a lot of time on try to improve the look of the blog page.

And it is of this very page whereof I speak, first, as on arrival in the cellar bar (unbearably hot, it was) last night for this week's quiz, of which more anon, I was greeted accusingly by David and Gitte, who demanded to know where my report on the previous week's quiz was. The poor things had, apparently, been hopefully logging on every day to read my account of their win (they did win, I think, or came second anyway), and lo and behold - nothing.

What can I say? Except that in this final stretch of the academic year, one is very busy correcting exams, writing reports, stacking them in order, getting them countersigned by one of our ubiquitous, and numerous, 'managers' (whatever happened to Directors of Studies?) and then going out drinking, as suddenly people realise that they won't see you for a while, and want to go out for drinks, the fact that they don't particularly want to go out for drinks with you during the entire year being immaterial.

So, briefly, last week's quiz was of the bog standard variety, with a low turnout, and as we neither won nor came second, I wasn't particularly inspired to put finger to key about it. We came third out of four teams, and that fourth team largely consisted of some Spanish women who seemed rather put out that Jimmy, last week's q.m., refused to translate the questions into Spanish, or 'cristiano' (Christian), as one of them put it. Our quiz takes place in a British pub and is entirely in English; our Spanish friends and acquaintances are welcome, but there are few, if any, concessions, and taking the time to translate everything would defeat the object of the whole exercise, which is mainly to be a source of recreation for the native Brits, and this despite the fact that Jimmy is himself Spanish, his real name being... well I'm not sure but I imagine his surname to be Jiménez - do any of you know? Jimmy asks his questions in grave, determined, quite heavily-accented English, which unfortunately precludes anything like charisma, and non Spanish-speakers find him a bit difficult to understand, but there. It takes all sorts, and my team frequently do well when he is asking the questions. But not last week.

Before the start of last week's quiz, we were visited by some serious-looking young men and women who represented some international charity - it might be called Rescue or something like that. They announced that they would be the beneficiaries of the 20 June quiz, which is one of two or three in the year in which the proceeds go to charity, the entry fee being tripled for the occasion.

I have to say that my views on charities are rather similar to my views on pension funds. You know they exist, and you suspect they might do some good, but you also feel that the money, for all you know, might be being creamed off elsewhere. The whole charity industry is, to put it mildly, beginning to get on my nerves, though it doesn't always do to say so. One of our 'managers' collected a respectable sum of money for someone or other by running in the Madrid Marathon, but she wouldn't have run in the thing unless she'd quite fancied doing it in the first place; these people are really doing these things for themselves, rather than the charity, I feel.

But I go along with the charity quizzes. I'll cheerfully pay my increased entry fee; I'll buy a couple of raffle tickets with no hope of winning anything, and that's fine. What I don't get is a glow of satisfaction at having helped anyone, as I might, for all I know, be increasing the fortunes of the likes of the heirs of Robert Maxwell.

These guys last week said a few words about who they were, and what a grand job they were doing, and what they were going to do with the cash raised from our quiz the following week. We all bought some raffle tickets, too.

So, last night we assembled once more, and the serious-looking young men (not the women, this time) reappeared wearing identical blue T-shirts representing Rescue, or whatever it is called, and distributed a lot of leaflets about it, which came in useful as impromptu fans, but which were not, as far as I could tell, actually read by anyone. They then sat down and made up a team with a couple of other relative newcomers, with rueful, self-deprecating smiles and assertions of how bad they were at this kind of thing, which proved to be spot-on.

So I report, this week, a resounding victory for my team, with 143 points. This was the full team minus Antony, acting as joint q.m. with Alex. About €300 was raised for Rescate, as I now remember the name is - but it means Rescue, anyway - and the five of us received a bottle of Irish whiskey each, as well as winning three spot prizes.

And we happily celebrated our win with our friends from the Old Farts* until quite late, but what does it matter? I have very little to do today, and after tomorrow, well there's a lot I could do, and much that I should do, but nothing I actually have to do. This last sentence is a slight variation on some lines spoken by the character Bernard Woolley in Yes Prime Minister, to the Prime Minister. But they describe my situation very well, too. But I hope I shall put my summer to some good purpose, nonetheless.


* I have to add, here, that last week, Gitte was wearing a T-shirt with this charming name emblazoned across the front of it. They now want us to emulate her (for she was the only member of the team so embellished) and have 'Table Five' T-shirts. But Mush says we can't just copy them, real committment demands tattoos. Of course he's only joking. Isn't he?