Parochial concerns

I was headed home yesterday after a busy day and was looking forward to relaxing in the garden when my phone rings..."You haven't forgotten about the village quiz meeting have you?" Shit. Obviously I had completely forgotten about the village quiz meeting but as I hold the Very Important post of team captain of the mighty Boomerangs I knew I would have to turn up, if only to ensure I didn't get put down for the worst jobs in my absence.

Now it has to be admitted that our village quiz is a subject of very little interest to anyone but the participants. We have 15 teams of 4 and we play from November to March in a little league. Why then is it considered necessary to have a meeting about it on the 7th of flaming June? Well, OK, they need to sort out who will ocmpose what questions, but really that should not take too long. HA BLOODY HA!

The first bone of contention was the way the seats and tables had been put out for the Grand Final which is played by the top 5 teams. Amazingly,what with me being so brainy and everything, this particular final had not concerned me last season...I was at the football that night seeing us lose 3-0 to Carlisle...so I had no idea what they were arguing about and rather less to contribute to the heated discussion. So that row went on about half an hour but was as nothing to the reaction to the revelation about the buzzer system.

Yes, we have buzzers. When a team gets a question wrong it is 'On the buzzer'and we never seem to press the buzzer fast enough. But the question master let slip last night that when there is more than one side pressing the buzzer the system will automatically show that table 1 was first, or if they don't press table 2 etc. THAT MEANS THAT IF YOU ARE AT TABLE 4 OR 5 YOU ARE AT A DISADVANTAGE!!!!!!! Now I know that in the grand scheme of things this isn't vitally important, but I, along with everyone else there last night suddenly realised that we had in the past very probably Been Robbed!!!!!! Bloody hell...that explains why I have never won! I was on the verge of demanding a rerun of the past 12 quiz seasons. Suffice to say our meeting that should have taken half an hour went on for more than three and they were still rowing about it when I left the pub.

I'm doing questions on TV and Film and also on War and Peace so don't let me forget. I could base the war questions around the Great Row at the 2006 Village Quiz Meeting.