Horses and Hound

Thursday 13th March
Purley Arms

In the week of the magnificent Cheltenham Festival it was the Hounds, not the horses, that were falling like flies.  Lord Peterkins of Fathershire was on Shirely duties; Daren had spent the afternoon with Robson Hound waging war on the bookmakers from the comfort of the Smugglers Inn and, with an early start the following morning for a romantic weekend away with Mrs Bear in Rome lined up, had decided that was quite enough.  And with Steve also otherwise committed The Hound was down to two fit 'runners' with the handicap of carrying twelve stone of alcohol sodden Robson.

Once again, thank the merciful heavens, we were spared pictures on the opening round - instead being given the ten following 'equations' ("24 H in a D", being 24 hours in a day - that type of thing)...

- 18 H on a GC
- 3 B M
- 100 C in a E
- 6 B to an O in C
- 13 is U F S
- 3 W on a T
- 8 T on a O
- 15 P in a R T
- 13 S on the U S F
- 66 B of the B

... none of which gave the slightest problem and the Hound were over the first and setting a good pace.

The following rounds threw up the anticipated question about the rise in prescription charges but left well alone the anticipated subject of the recently late Bob Crowe (got to be a cheap gag in there somewhere but I'm damned if I can quite put my finger on it...).  Having been given their names we correctly identified the four ghosts from PacMan but failed to get Donald Duck's middle name.  We also failed to correctly identify the building found at SW1A 2AA, the name of the original dish brought back from India by the British whose name translates as 'pepper water', what an autophobe is scared of, the two countries to feature city called Tripoli, the tube line with the most stations AND the oldest football club in London.  In amongst all the failure though we got a few right and managed to nail the fact they were all types of cake fairly early on in the connection round - 'frog cake' anyone...?!?

The top ten this week was another spurious affair - literally just given to us as 'top ten pets' - despite the vagueness of the question and the amusing but interminable debates that ensued we correctly identified seven...*

And we closed out on a decent music round that included Level 42, Soft Cell, Ultravox and Christina Perry.

The 'bag of minstrels' was up for grabs to whoever got closest to the year that Madame Tussauds opened - but we were, from memory, out by some margin.

All that was good however for a total of 120 - our lowest in recent weeks - and that total was good enough to see us win by several lengths and secure another £50 for Steve's spreadsheet.

I rounded off the evening by getting slightly confused on the journey home, getting off the bus at the wrong stop, walking for ages, getting a train and eventually taking home one of the finest chicken kebabs known to man.

See you Thursday if you're able to make it...

Kevster

* Fish, cat, dog, rabbit, guinea pig, hamster, birds, domestic fowl, reptiles, horses/ponies