I do love a good quiz – and for many years, as I’ve chronicled here, we were at the Dolphin in Uphill near Weston-super-Mare for their weekly quiz. We met and made so many good friends through the congenial yet competitive quiz! Thanks to connections we made, in the best possible way, husband joined regulars for folk night where people brought various instruments and had a good old singalong. Out of that came the one and only Celtic Shambles, Celtic was the genre of music, Shambles was… well, you can guess. From that came the Beach’d Buoys – and yes, key founding members were all Dolphin quizzers.
The quiz continued every week, the landlord was the quiz master for a while, and then one of the stars of the local amateur dramatic group took over, and became our illustrious maestro. We continued to enjoy our weekly quizzes, meeting new friends who had recently arrived in the village, having spent a year cruising the canals of middle England, sharing their adventures on their YouTube channel. My two writing friends, Fenja Hill and Macaque, joined us and Tuesday night was, in a way the highlight of the week! Whether we won or we didn’t, there were always hilarious things to remember and to laugh about again as we walked home. Even when the world came to a halt and we were cut off from being with anyone apart from our own household – still the friendships carried on.
There is a saying (you know what it is!) all good things must come to an end – and another, nothing stays the same for ever. The Dolphin quiz was ended (not by the quiz maestro or the quizzers, or lack of interest) but quizzing as a thing continued, and the gang simply moved to The Ship where there was also a quiz – on a Thursday this time. We have been happily quizzing away there, enjoying employing our brains, and enjoying the company.
Unexpectedly (for us) there was an announcement on the village Facebook page, that the village committee were going to be running a quiz night! All welcome to make up teams of six – well, how perfect for us! The quiz took place in the village hall last night, and it was great to see so many village folk gathered to enjoy the evening together. We brought our own drinks – although tea, coffee, soft drinks were available as were light snacks. There were a number of rounds and we seemed to be doing quite well. I was stumped with the TV round because I don’t really watch very much but luckily the rest of the team rallied and we did OK. Rounds were marked by neighbouring teams as we progressed, and at last at the end, we added them all up and our scores were collected.
What a super, friendly, villagey, mind-boggling evening spent with friends and neighbours. And guess what? We won!!!!!
I can’t find a picture of the village hall so I have shared an image of Uphill by night. One of the team lives in the lovely blue house on the left.
Here is the link for our canal adventuring team-mates: https://www.amazon.co.uk/YEAR-FROG-Misadventures-Two-Narrowboaters/dp/B0CLJJCS46
Here is a link for a collection of short stories from my talented team-mate Fenja Hill https://www.amazon.co.uk/Happy-Endings-are-Overrated-collection-ebook/dp/B0D3S7T92C
Here is a link for a children’s adventure novel (a second one is due out before too long) from Hamish MacNeil https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Discoveries-Wimblestone-Road-children
You can also find other books and anthologies from both Fenja and Hamish (aka Macaque) on Amazon
Lois Elsden 