We’ll come
to that. But, not wishing to keep you waiting unnecessarily, I will say that it’s
an extremely low-key thing and you will be disappointed and not very interested
in it.
Last Thursday evening we went to a Table Quiz. You might know the format better as a Pub Quiz. Four team members at a table who write their answers on a sheet of paper and submit them for scoring. Ten questions per round, ten rounds. Highest scoring table wins something. It’s all for a very good cause so you buy more raffle tickets than you might actually wish for. You get it, right?
The evening
had a sort of a ‘throwback’ quality to it. A throwback to Pre-Covid days. Table
quizzes were more usual then, less so since. Perhaps that’s one reason why
there was such a big crowd at this one. Lots and lots of people, out on a
school night, looking to answer some questions. Go figure.
Our team was
comprised of me, Patricia, Bertha, and Majella. You don’t know them but one of
them is my wife (again, go figure). We represented a good variety of knowledge
and a fine quota of low confidence. Both important attributes for a table quiz
team. Bertha was assigned to write the answers on the answer sheet because her
writing is legible. Mine is very much not.
(I should
mention that this post isn’t going anywhere in particular. Just setting down
some memories.)
The raffle
ticket sellers all employ the same shtick. They are our friends and will sell
us the very best tickets and even give us a few more than we should
realistically expect to get because we are special. We all know it’s a time-worn
performance and we all embrace it equally.
We fall
back into our old table-quiz habits. I have my own little sheets of paper upon
which I draw a matrix for each round and scribble in our answers and note our
scores per round so that we can challenge it if someone adds up our score
wrong. Of course, we never challenge anything.
We fall
back into old table-quiz etiquette too. If Bertha-the-Scribe knows the answer
and we all know it too, we just nod sagely as she writes it down. No need for consultation.
Of course, sometime Bertha knows it and writes it down and we don’t know it at
all. We still nod sagely though. I’ve got through a lot of table quiz questions
by nodding sagely without having a clue what I’m nodding about.
Some of the
questions are designed to spark debate. Some are just plain knowledge. You either
have it or you don’t. In the former category, a) what is the most dangerous animal
in the world, i.e. killed most humans? In the latter category, b) in what year
did Shane Lowry last win a major. a) Is it a cow? A dog? A crocodile. No, it’s
a mosquito, apparently. b) Not a clue, put a random year down and fingers
crossed. It was actually 2019.
At the half
time interval, drinks and cocktail sausages and chips, we are floundering in the
bottom half of the score board. There is a ‘plate’ competition for us poor
souls who are not in contention and we focus our minds on that. For the second
half, though, we rally impressively with rounds on books and movies and music. Strong
suits all. We max the rounds out and suddenly we’re up there with the leaders.
Never really in with any chance of winning but the plate is nailed. We get a
bottle of wine each and our photo took. Patricia has already seized a bottle of
white in the raffle, so we are bailing home three bottles to the good.
And what of
this sensual experience that never happened before in all of sixty-one and a
half years?
The quiz
was over and suddenly a large cardboard box was at my shoulder. A lady was
holding it. She nodded at me, and I did the needful automatically, without
really having to be asked or without really thinking about it at all.
I drew the next raffle ticket. That was my sensual experience.
Oh, Ken,
you kept us here for that? Drawing a raffle ticket out of a box?
I know, I
know but bear with me. Of all the experiences I had this week, I think this was
the only one that I had for the very first time. And it was strange. It was
really quite strange. Firstly, the tickets in the box were deep and they were
all crumpled. Somebody had gone to the trouble of crumpling them up. Secondly,
it was a bit hard to just get one strip of tickets. The crumpling had bound
them all together. One had to do a chef’s ‘pinch of salt gesture with finger
and thumb to separate one out. Then, you don’t look at the box, you look away
from it and also, by default, away from the person who is holding it. This is
probably on account of some wish to not pick out a ticket from someone you know
by looking in the box and identifying it in there. A stupid notion if ever
there was one. I drew the ticket and handed it to the lady and when I looked,
she was gone. A fleeting, furtive transaction in the middle of a large room.
And, although
it was a great night out and I wouldn’t want to reduce the niceness of it in
any way, the drawing of that ticket, for some unexplainable reason, reminded me
of another individual sensual experience from some years before.
And that,
alas, was the carrying of a coffin.
Strange, I
know, and not very easy making. But that’s life, isn’t it? Taking the rough
with the smooth. Finding the best in things whilst acknowledging the worst.
Now… where’s
all that wine?
2 comments:
Off topic but one thing that really annoys me is selling me a strip of five tickets and then not separating them. From a purely environmental perspective, this is using five times as much paper and printing as is necessary. Why do it?
Now, you see, that I get. It's the poet in me. Misses 98% of what's going on—I believe I've mentioned the curtains with the giant butterfles I lived with for two years and never noticed—and yet finds my interest piqued by picking a ticket out of a box. Why is that? Why do some things resonate and others go whoosh! over our head? I actually have a poem about first last times. I mean, where did that come from? Or the one about Auden's spleen I wrote two days ago. I mean, seriously! I woke up from my nap, peed (in the appropriate receptacle), wrote a poem about Auden's spleen and then went back to sleep. Go figure.
Never been to a pub quiz in my life by the way. Probably never will.
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