It’s struck me that’ it’s quite a while since I mentioned quiz night – that is quiz night at the Dolphin. I honestly can’t remember when we first started going to the quiz in the Dolphin, as soon as my children were legally allowed in a pub, I guess. Now, many years on from those days, we still trot down every Tuesday to meet our quizzing chums who we have got to know through doing the quiz and now meet every week.
The quiz is a bingo quiz – the answer sheet is a 5×5 grid, a square for each of the 25 questions which are read out in random order. There is a carbon copy beneath each, which you tear off when all the questions are done, the idea is to avoid cheating – as if anyone would! The answer sheet is randomly numbered, not sequentially, and as the answers are read out – if you get a correct line or four correct corners, you shout ‘Dolphin!’ and if you are first to do so, you get a prize. Then whoever has the most correct answers also gets a prize! After that, as we’re all unwinding from the excitement and drama, a final question is asked, the beer round, and whoever wins gets a free round the next week.
We have got to know so many people and made so many friends through the quiz – our chums the ice-creams who sell the best ice-creams ever and are (with husband) founder members of the Beach’d Buoys Shanty Band and the Weston Ukulele Players (who raised over £6000 for a local children’s hospice last year), and the Bleadon Am-Drams, a nearby village amateur dramatics group who are just brilliant, plus many other friends. Our current team is not only us, but chums who moved to our village after starring in the TV show ‘Escape to the Country’; they escaped to our village of Uphill!
So tonight, we won nothing but had plenty of head scratching over the questions, plenty of laughs as we conversed, and delicious home-baked free pizza between the two rounds. Altogether a splendid evening!
Lois Elsden 