Victory at Last

The last few weeks have been fairly low-scoring ones at the quiz, and so it was an agreeable change that Monday's winning team achieved the not inconsiderable score of 145 points, comfortably beating the second-placed team by a margin of 19.

What was even more agreeable about this was that the winning team were none other than ourselves, finally hitting form as the season nears its end. We didn't have Sam with us, and our occasional substitute Liz took his place at the last minute, but whatever the composition of the teams, we were going to be unstoppable.

Enough boasting. But it is nice to win for a change, and it was a real team effort as well.

Next week, I shall be acting as joint quizmaster with my team-mate John, and as often happens when two people start to build up questions separately, we have now realised, five days before the event, that some of the usual favourite rounds: Sport; Geography and Cinema, are not there. Mind you, there has been so much cinema lately that one week without it won't hurt anyone, I would have thought. One of the regular question masters is incredibly keen on the cinema, so that when he does it, we not only get a Cinema round, but half the General Knowledge round is cinema-based as well. And his Literature questions are often about novels that have been turned into movies, as the more pretentious like to refer to them. And does there have to be a round on geography every week? Maybe it would be nice to have some different topics for a change.

John is doing a Food and Drink round, which sounds OK but in my experience there is a very limited number of questions you can reasonably ask.

Another minor blow, and something that happens quite frequently, was the effective use by Alex in this week’s quiz of two question ideas – well one idea and one actual question – of mine for next week, so it will be both of us at the drawing board at the weekend, I imagine.

Charlton Matters

Well of course it does, but what I mean is that I was expecting to write nothing about Charlton Athletic at all for several weeks, and now we’ve gone and signed Darren Bent from Ipswich, and the season only ended (with the West Ham game) two days ago. When I look back to how much new signings were longed for and eagerly awaited last season, I can hardly believe it.