South Croydon
Merely 42 hours after having been asked to leave, The Hound was back in the Purley Arms - bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and in no way whatsoever prepared for the events that were to follow. D2 and the Green Hound had made their apologies earlier and Lord Peterkins of Fatherhood was fondly remembered and muchly missed. But three Hounds is enough to form a quorum and thus Robson, G-Force and liddle ol' me were
Initially it was all about the recovering from the shock of Arsenal being two down to Hull inside the first ten minutes of the FA Cup Final - but recover we damn well did and as the ever wily and wiry Wenger tinkered with his tactics to eventually overhaul their early deficit, so we blew away any lingering cobwebs with a pint or three in the somewhat busier than we're used to pub.
With extra-time a fading memory, and Wenger's Arsenal career saved for another 400 years, The Hound left the pub and set off on the 300 metre walk to our next destination - Bynes Road and the HQ of the 6th Croydon Scout Group. We had been advised to go via an offy so as to equip ourselves with booze for the quiz but this required detour can in no way explain why we walked three quarters of a mile towards Croydon before turning around and, via the gift of GPS, heading back exactly the way we'd come. So long did we spend wandering that by the time we finally arrived we had entirely missed the pre-amble and the whole of the first round of questions.
No matter - our hosts were endlessly accommodating and, having slunk down the entire length of the scout hut to occupy the spare table furthest from the door The Hound blended quietly into the background, cracked open the Wotsits and got on with the business of playing catch up. However once G-Force was thoroughly woggled up and halfway through the bottle of wine he'd brought along to entertain himself, our quiet background blending was interrupted as he bellowed a sexual swear-word at the question master during round four. Hey-ho, no real harm done and, to be fair, the question master was an absolute, 100%, prime-cut wazzock of a man.
The end of round four marked the halfway point in the quiz (kind of...) and was the cue for a thoroughly disconcerting series of events... Firstly The Wazzock joined us up close and personal and ran us through the ten questions we'd missed in the first round whilst wandering around Croydon. Simultaneously a small army of incredibly elderly women appeared more or less from thin air fully armed with large trays of sausage meat pie, pots of vegetables, potatoes and jugs of the thickest gravy I have ever encountered. With The Wazzock having departed, our table naturally then became the option of choice for the crones to gather and eat their fill. Heaven alone knows what they made of The Hound as Robson and I did our best to remain aloof whilst G-Force kept bellowing sexual swear words at regular intervals. Seconds of the main course were followed by trifle, more aloofness, more bellowing, a few apologies and being laid siege to by a small army of raffle-ticket and 'lucky-box' sellers.
Rounds five through eight were ab.so.lute.ly right up The Hound's alley - we got three wrong out of 40 and successfully played our Joker on our ten out of ten General Knowledge final round. I say 'final round' quite wrongly because The Wazzock then dropped in a twenty question musical round. Which we got 95% right. From memory. Because by this stage almost all the offy-sourced alcohol had been consumed and the edges of everything had gone a bit fuzzy. Thus it was huge bonus that we had a winning raffle ticket that enabled us to choose a bottle of red wine to crack into whilst The Wazzock tallied the final scores.
So we won. Natch. Glossing over the margin of victory The Hound sat and bathed in bottles of red prizes whilst all manner of volunteer types tidied up all around us. Eventually we had to give up our table and were thus forced to abruptly end our sojourn into Scoutland and head south back to the welcoming Arms of Purley. Wherein we found karaoke in the fullest of full swings and, plomping ourselves front and centre, were serenaded by Elvis Presley, Belinda Carlisle, some dodgy looking old-boy who could actually croon and two Dorises who absolutely plumbed new depths.
G-Force and I were cruelly plucked from this cosy scene by the heartless strictures of the 407 timetable. I hope he had more luck catching his than I did as I stood there, arm outstretched, whilst the bus driver chatted away on his phone and drove straight past me. I eventually got home around 0130hrs - for all I know Robson is still clutched in the Arms...
Think it was around 1.30 when I got home. Definitely objectives achieved though; if we get invited back after that debacle I'll eat my woggle.
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