25th September 2009

Jolly Farmers, Purley – Thursday 25th September 2009
Those attending: Tina Bear, El Barnetto, Robson Hound, SmithD2 and That Kevster

I’ve never been too sure what it takes to establish ‘a tradition’ but I would suggest that several, consecutive, Thursday evenings spent quaffing beer and being baffled by a Pub’s Quiz scoring system pretty much constitute one. Thus the generally knowledgeable collective, loosely referred to as ‘The Hound’, gathered for its latest, traditional, shenanigans.

The positioning of the ‘pre-match meal sub-report’ in these writings is always a potential minefield – I am choosing to address the matter earl y doors and thus leave room for some ‘post-match munchies’ reporting later on. I have it from the various horses’ mouths that they individually enjoyed a multi-filling baguette from Upper Crust, an omelette, a Mr Wimpy meal and a ham, egg & chips dish. At the risk of propagating another tradition I shall invite those readers not present to match the diners to the dishes. In terms of my own pre-match prep I fell from last weeks’ standard of fine-dining, but poisoned, scallops to a lowly, post-gym, vaguely chocolate flavoured, protein-shake. Nowhere near as nice on the palate but it stayed inside me for a bit longer – for which I’m grateful.

And so to the quiz. If indeed what followed can be called ‘A Quiz’.

Initial suspicions were quickly confirmed when an irksome little prole announced that our tradit ional Question Master was away and that, in the tradition of the totally pointless Supply Teacher, he would be standing in his stead and demanding answers from us. At this stage it’s fair to say we were already unhappy. The winds of change had begun to blow.

So as not to baffle The Irksome Little Prole, we decided not to continue our hilarious series of ‘variation-on-The-Hound’ themed team names and just plumped for ‘The Hound’. Plain and simple.

And so to the first round. The usual fare – SmithD2 complained of fewer than usual, ‘… is it A)… or is it B)…’ type questions – but Robson Hound declared himself pleased it was so. As if to emphasise D2’s point the evening’s real stinker reared its open-ended head here. The question was, ‘In cockney rhyming slang wha t does Steffi Graff mean?’ We said ‘laugh’. The Prole later, absurdly, gave the answer as ‘bath’. I could give all sorts of proof for the accuracy of our answer (http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/slang/steffi_graf; http://www.thornton-cleveleys.co.uk/cockney.htm; http://www.londonslang.com/db/s/) but The Prole was having none of it. And so to Andre Agassi – when he’s ‘having a Steffi’ do you imagine him to be, a) bathing or, b) chuckling gently to himself?!

The Irksome Little Prole then ran through the Round 1 scores – all of which were a good 30% down on what we have, traditionally, become accustomed to under the Traditional Question Master. We were somewhere around last.

And so to (the music) round two. And Mrs Bear falling victim to the rapidly spreading, and highly contagious, Rioting Fever. The Hound had done well – we thought we got all but maybe two right. The Irksome Little Prole gave us a new total score that was almost lower than our Round One mark. Mrs Bear rioted. I welled up with a strange mixture of pride and redundancy. Again. No matter. Mrs Bear returned from haranguing The Irksome Little Prole and assured us that all would be taken care of.

And so to the last round. We were mostly good, occasionally unsure and on at least one occasion (what is LANCASTER* an anagram of?) found significantly wanting. Still, to hell with it – The Irksome Little Prole seemed to be making it up on the spur of the moment so we figured we could be in with a chance, depending on those changeable winds. And thus it was we came 4th. At least that’s what I think because there were two teams in joint 3rd. But then 2 minutes later The Irksome Little Prole announced that actually there’d been a tie for 2nd as well. So who knows where we actually came? Vaguely interesting to note that the wining score would, in a traditional week, have come last.

And to cap off a splendid evening some absolute Berk (see what I did there – more rhyming slang) won the £500+ raffle that’s been building up for the last couple of months. Grrrrrrrrrrr. Thereafter the evening took on an ‘end-of-term’ feeling and the air was thick with scrunched up bits of paper being hurled from one disgruntled team20to another – the Quizzard’s Sleeve possibly being the worst culprits. Despite SmithD2’s best efforts when Mrs Bear wasn’t looking.

All that is left is my post-match meal report which consisted of a £1 bag of Yellow Monster Munch and a can of Uri Geller. The very hautest of Haute Cuisine. And the fact that Halle Berry has got fantastic Brad Pitts (Die Another Day is playing in the background as I type this). Fantastic.