Dear departed Norris

Quiz night tonight, and as usual it was a jolly and much-laughing sort of an evening. Husband was elsewhere twanging (playing bass in a uke band) But my friend and distinguished writer Fenja Hill was with me and then our friends R & P arrived to take up pens against the onslaught of obscure, ridiculous, and sometimes tricky, sometimes facile questions. The answers are written on a 5×5 answer sheet, and when the solutions are read out, if you have a line correct in any direction, or the four corners and you are first to shout, you win a prize – as does whichever team has the highest correct answers.

There was a question to which the answer was ‘homeless’. I didn’t hear it correctly, so looked at P’s answer (every answer sheet is different, not in chronological order, so you might win a line before others in your team) After squinting at what she had written, I had to ask her – and the answer was, as I mentioned, ‘homeless’. I laughed and told her that at first I’d thought she had written ‘hamster’! We all chuckled over this, and carried on puzzling over the next question.

It was time for the answers and we all sat poised as they were read out. The quizmaester called out the answers and he came to the ‘homeless question – which I would have had right, except for some ridiculous reason, I had written hamster, not homeless! What an idiot! Maybe I was thinking of our own dear departed hamster, Norris, but whatever, it was, my answer was wrong.

It didn’t matter one bit. We’d had a marvellous friendly and funny evening, and we had pizza halfway through! A great night, whatever the hamster!

Here is a link to Fenja’s work: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fenja-Hill/e/B07DJQCC8D?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1688512219&sr=8-1