There are three kinds of falsehood...

... lies, damned lies and statistics...

(click all images to enlarge)

The overall view;

Most read posts;

Overall audience;

Audience in the last month;



... make of them what you will!

(Frankly I'm concerned by the disproportionate level of current attention from our Septic cousins over the pond.  *taps nose conspiratorially and slips into the shadows*)

(Bah) Humbug Hound

Thursday 18th December
Purley Arms

We lost.

It was terrible.

It was Christmas themed, it was terrible and The Hound was fifth out of seven with the winning score being a meagre 135.

I've lost G-Force's notes (having ripped up my own in disgust at something half way through and flung them to the floor), I can't remember very much of any use, it was terrible and we lost.

The Hound was reduced to a barely quorate three-ball with Hounds, Robson & Green away doing something festively office related that presumably wasn't terrible and didn't involve losing.

The only remotely worthwhile thing I can recall is that with astounding foresight the Green one had, earlier that very afternoon, emailed round the answer to the 'box-of-chocolates' question - this lead to us pretty much having already written it down before the question was finished and then leering at the rest of the pub as they stared at us wondering how the hell we'd added up the number of gifts in the 12 Days of Xmas so damned quickly.  Having said that I can't remember what the sweets were and I've no recollection of having any of them.

Other than that it was terrible.  And we lost.

One last 'quick one', staggering, bus, kebab (epic, natch), sofa, sleep.  Waking after a couple of hours, more kebab, bed.

Terrible.  And we lost.

Belated Hound

Some things are lost and some things are found and some things are meant to remain hidden.

These words sprang to mind when I finally had time to revisit the scribbled notes from the Quiz that took place on 20th November and tried to discern their meaning

I guess I am feeling somewhat akin to how Howard Carter and his fellow Egyptologists must have felt when trying to decipher the the hieroglyphics at Tooting Common

I have in front of me 4 sheets (well 3 3/4ers to be more accurate) of unadultarated, scribbled madness.

Sheet 1 has a large ragged chunk missing but contains the following cryptic entries,
A picture of a 3 eyed dog 
The letters F-A-B-A-C-E-A-E
 the word "Paramaribo".

Sheet 2 is just as intriguing but written in a different ink. In the centre it contains a large £1150 in a box with an arrow . Above this is written the inscription "Alfred Hitchcock's belly-button". Down the right hand side are written the following clues;
Julie's Jewish dogs, in the canteen
Robson's German Fixation
Groove coverage
Lots of Hamsters = Ched Evans
Road Signs

Sheet 3 is less obscure but just as perplexing consisting of T's, F's and X's down the right hand side and ten 4's and nine 2's down the left with an H = 164 underlined in a heavy hand

The Final sheet which may or may not hold the clue to unlocking this devious cipher contains the following:

On one side in large capitals is written the word TWINS whilst on the other is a drawing of a prostrate duck witth the numbers 9 and 10 and the word Rochester written inside it.

I can confidently recall that the Hounnd won that particular quiz and that Steve and Pete were missing, but the rest of it is unfathomable from the materials at hand. Unfortunately, over a week has passed since these events unfolded soI have no chance of dredging any more details up from the murky mists of my febrile mind so we will just have to leave it at that I'm afraid.  

Houndless Opportunities

Purley Arms
Thursday 27th November

Opportunities not taken. No Robson this week. An own goal and a missed sitter deservedly conspired to let in 'Busters' by 3 points. We managed to collectively (a) mishear 'Jane Eyre' as 'Wuthering Heights' worth 10 points, and (b) wrongly recall the German Flag to deny us 14 points in the Jeopardy round having successfully dodged 3 much harder q's. The middle stripe is NOT yellow. I was going to refer to these as schoolboy errors, but to be truthful the schoolboy in question would have to have been at least as drunk as we were.  

Not for the first time being in the Purley Arms felt like being in a parallel universe, one where hoards of females descend drinking large quantities of wine and being intimidatingly loud. It might have been this that prompted Daren to say "My dough has risen", I'm not sure, but it is a matter of record that he did say it. It later transpired that it was scouse Chris's birthday and she decided to celebrate by getting the girls together to do the PA quiz. Fair enough I guess.

It also emerged on the night that a tricky dilemma has presented itself to the Kevster, one that might involve him going on the lash with the Hound, pissing into small receptacles on the M25, not going to the cinema in Nottingham and persuading his Mum to pick him up in a drunken state from one of Surrey's many fine pubs, not necessarily in that order.

 

Scottish flavour to the picture round (it being St Andrew's day at the weekend). Full marks ensued, good get of Rhona Cameron by the Kevster, the other difficult one being correctly guessed as John Logie Baird which I think came up previously in Commonwealth Games week.

Current Affairs handled pretty well considering we all claimed to have being working too hard to look at the News, all right not ALL. Underestimated the auction price of Dooley Wilson's piano from Casablanca, and failed to get something to do with Steff McGovern's accent.

Rd. 3 was on nicknames, including the now mandatory Chelsea question (Chopper Harris), good job it wasn't Rolf Harris, might have got some colourful answers. 10 out of 10 a decent haul.

Connections was varieties of plums/damsons. Definitely a case of plumbing the depths. Had only heard of Victoria so not a lot to go on. I somewhat doubt whether the Hermann Goering variety is a best seller, especially in Germany but there you go. We went for Wagner's ring (Fnaar!).

20 points out of 30 in the next round, see also above. Top Ten was again replaced by True/False round. 16 points for this one. Not much to say about T/F questions.

The Bear traps avoided in the Jeopardy round included the number of yards in a mile, our closest guess was 1756, the answer 1760, (note to Kevster, therefore making the old 440 yds a 1/4 mile and the old hurdles race 1/16th mile). 7 lions on the Royal Standard was another, we would probably have gone lower. 

17 or 18 points on the music round but the damage already done. Debbie seemed very please that we had lost, last time we donate prize money to her causes. 

We have to be more ruthless, or not.

Graham