We attend the Big Village Pub Quiz Night.
Mr & Mrs Short Tony, Big A and I huddle at a table in the courtyard, as the quiz was being held outside under ‘weather permitting’ rules. (For overseas readers I should explain that the British definition of ‘weather permitting’ means “not like in the film ‘The Day After Tomorrow'”.)
“Brigadier Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart,” I inform the table. “Played by Nicholas Courtenay”.
They are amazed by my general knowledge.
“I wish the quiz would start soon,” complains the LTLP. “I’m freezing.”
In truth, I have mixed feelings about this quiz. I am extremely good at quizzes (that is a fact, not just me boasting. Sometimes I worry about telling people things because it sounds like me boasting, whereas I am actually just trying to tell them a fact that they will be interested in and not boasting at all.)
Anyway, I am as extremely good at quizzes as I am as a lover, and the others are quite clever as well. So we had won the previous two quizzes. After the second one, there had been a certain amount of booing, and so I have it in the back of my mind that perhaps it would be a good idea not to win this one.
This thought seems to be in the backs of lots of other people’s minds as well.
It is all very well saying that winning again would be as tedious as if Ricky Gervais had done loads of easy comedy again in his new show about being tactless to disabled people and ethnic minorities. But when the adrenaline starts pumping and the questions start being called, it is impossible not to cover your bit of paper just in case people are looking and hiss ‘sssshhhh’ when the LTLP suggests an answer in too loud a voice.
“Ernie was the fastest milkman in the West,” announces the landlady. “What was the name of his horse?”
“Oh!!! Oh!!!” says Big A. “Wasn’t it something like -“
“Sssshhhh!!!!!” I hiss.
We finish the quiz second, due to not knowing that a cockroach has seven penises.
I shake the hand of the winning team leader, who I know quite well. Now that it’s over, I am pleased with second place, and that nobody can accuse me of engaging in unnatural practices with cockroaches.
We collect our beer tokens. We spend them.
(Note to Mr Gervais’s agent – I have not watched it yet but I am sure that it is very good. I also really liked the funny joke he did at the first tube bombings when he announced that in fact they hadn’t happened after all, and that it was all a joke and that we could all go home. Or maybe that was at Live 8 about the starving people in Africa – sorry, it was all in the same week and I get a bit confused.)