Tonight it was quiz tonight, and my regular team were unfortunately inconvenienced by illness (South Africans and Ice-creams) and daughter was on night shift; fortunately, husband’s band practice was cancelled so he came with me. Recently it’s been very busy on quiz nights, lots of teams, which makes it much more fun. The only thing is, our usual places in what used to be the lounge bar (there are no such distinctions now, it’s only that it’s the first bar we walk in to!) were all taken, the Am-Drams, the group of women, and Tim’s team, so we wandered in to what we call the cross-benches – the bar between the lounge and the public. We sat down with our beer, adjacent to Terry and a guy who turned out to be his son-in-law, and his son. We only knew Terry but by the time we had got through the first round we were on chatting and joking terms with the others.
Our friend we know as Mike Scott, who is the inspiration for one of my novels, yet to be finished, was the quiz master, the landlord sitting in a team with his friends, so there were plenty of laughs and jokes. We didn’t do too badly in the first round, but didn’t win, but as is the way with the pub quiz, the fun of it is truly the taking part, and buy the halfway point we had got into bantering conversation with Terry’s team next to us. There’s always an intermission between the rounds so we had a more normal conversation with our neighbours – he had lived in the north for a while so knew many of the places we know so well, and being a jovial chap was great company.
Round two, and again wew – the two of us, did quite well but not well enough, and although we enjoyed ourselves greatly, there were no winnings for us. However, that’s not the point; the whole point is to have an enjoyable time and meet new friends which we did on both counts. Quiz over after the beer round – a totally random question with the prize as a free round next week, I wandered round the corner to use the facilities. On the way back I stopped to chat to his quiz team and we spent an enjoyable quarter of an hour or so talking about films and books and films of books!
Quiz night is so much more than doing a pub quiz!
Lois Elsden 