Let Sleeping Hounds Lie

 A marathon effort started around midday. All converging on the cavernous Robson Towers. D most definitely had a head start, but all became convivial quite quickly anyway. Buckfast tonic wine, and one of D's fierce chillis really got the party going. Which is more than England did, almost total domination of the match, 0-1 at half time. Joe Hart's pre match posturing in the tunnel suddenly looked less clever. Mention should be made at this stage of the rather impressive 55 inch screen nano-pixellated tv, one of 3 big ones lying about R's pad. K's Ascot treble barely got out of the traps, Robson still in line for a small fortune should England level the thing by the end of the match.

Hodgson made himself marginally more popular by replacing the woeful Sterling at half-time. England then duly levelled the thing in the 56th min. The rest is history, Robson hung on to his bet amidst conflicting advice from those present, eschewing even the chance to cash in for almost the whole sum immediately before Sturridge took matters into his own hands.

 Anyway, it's only money and he won't starve. Time for a victory dance or two, with a roaring (mainly) eighties soundtrack that continued well into the second game. Great performance in that one by the Northern Irish rousing my own gaelic passion more than I expected that it would.

Inevitably, the remainder of the day is a bit more hazy, more so for some than others I would say. D and K made their excuses, G, S & R headed to the Purley Arms for a bit of quizzing. R by now starting to become slightly unpredictable, managed to remember his house keys but not his wallet. Barely managed to change his slippers for some more appropriate footwear. 

Lulling us in to a false sense of security, the first round was pictures of famous footballers, meat and drink. By the time we got to current affairs, R was in a lights on but nobody home scenario. Safe to say that the other two of us knew b**ger all in this round. Followed by a perfunctory 1980's round, I think that a now fast asleep R may have woken long enough to offer Neil Kinnock in response to one question, otherwise we are now a duo for the remainder of the quiz. Connections round was people who have less than the usual number of 5 digits on at least one hand. Included were, Matthew Perry, Jerry Garcia, Christian Bale, Telly Savalas, Buster Keaton, Frodo Baggins and James Doohan, but not Dave Allen.

Think I lost it a bit at this stage. For ten points we couldn't even remember the name of the captain of  England's rugby world cup winning team of 2003. I think that we did name about half of the squad, and Steve dredged up Martin, but Johnson wouldn't come (intentional double entendre). To little avail I resorted to slapping R's face with a wet haddock, knowing that the answer was in there somewhere. I am also sorry to say that an innocent enquiry from the Anoraks as to our performance vis-a-vis the ten pointers met with a less than polite response from me.

No choice but to go for the Jeopardy now, we scored 7 of 10, a fairly valiant effort. It would have been 8, if I had listened to R more closely. He awoke briefly from his coma to offer an answer to the question "What was Helen Duncan the last women in the UK to be convicted for in 1946". We put espionage, but incredibly R's answer of witchcraft was indeed correct. We were only 1 out on the number of stars on the European flag (there are 12), and failed to recall that Joseph Paxton designed Crystal Palace in 1851 (I said Houses of Parliament for which the date was pretty much correct, but sadly not the architect).

In a now long established routine, we covered the music round except for the obligatory Bruno Mars number. The Anoraks won with a frankly mediocre score, we were 3rd of 6.

And in a "Would you believe it" further development, Robson and I went on to Purley and somehow found ourselves drinking in Elliotts! Had to loan R my Oyster card for the bus/train trip home. A fine day, and so to bed.

G-Force