Snookered Hound

Graham and myself this week again, facing a relatively packed Purley Arms, southern section. Both of us into the exam marking now so a welcome break from the rigours of a working life.

Straight off and a bunch of snooker players spanning the ages. Absolutely no good for the oenophile teacher-type ladies next door but for us, frankly could have been tougher though we did get the wrong Davis between Joe and Fred.

Current Affairs and it was rotting durian that caused a university campus to be evacuated in Melbourne and the fire brigade called. That's it, they're scared of fruit. No wonder their cricketers resort to cheating. Other informative news was that Ikea's, in my opinion, quite good, meatball recipe is actually Turkish.

There followed a literature round, fairly standard fare and then that fiendish connection round. Looking back, how did we miss it but we did have at least two wrong answers. In our defence there doesn't seem to be universal agreement on what the four horsemen of the apocalypse all represent and well, we just didn't know Mexico's national flower. And Black September? Ok, a terror group but pretty obscure.

So ten pointers, two easy and one trappy. The first female US secretary of state? Condoleeza Rice or Madeleine Allbright? Given more time, I'm sure we'd have worked it out but that's the challenge of that three minute round and the coin came down the wrong side.

Rather a stern looking sort?

So, not exactly needing snookers but definitely behind the 8 ball at half time so an attacking approach would be required.

Link-ups and we got a bit side-tracked with a word that sounded like a letter. So we were trying to think of a word, or more likely acronym that slotted in with "queue", somehow missing the more obvious "eye". So not a perfect round and we were onto jeopardy.

Well, we weren't sure on them all but we had nine other answers. We needed a popular vegetable (contradiction in terms?) that included a plausible purple dragon? Well, we went cabbage.

I'm not sure I have much truck with these designer vegetables, pink-sprouting kale and all that nonsense. Thankfully Aldi don't seem to go a bundle on them either.

So with some, actually more modern music to finish up and a disappointing attempt on the length of the Volga as the nearest the pin, it was a mid table finish for Hound.

So in honour of Star Wars day.

From today at Heathrow apparently. Might have been confusing. Add for tomorrow, feliz cinco de mayo.