Warming Up Round

It's that time of the year again - the pub quiz is back after the summer break!

My local is an Irish pub; I am friends with the landlord and it is at least twice a month that I spend and evening there. Chris, the landlord, has established Tuesday nights as pub quiz nights, and they have become so popular it is impossible to find a seat if you do not book a table in advance.

Over the past two years, a group of friends and I have evolved into a really good team, each of us with their own special area of knowledge: 

There is Brian, who travels loads, both for business and leisure, and knows plenty about sports. Chris (not the landlord) is really good at politics and current affairs. Gary is our expert for Roman and other ancient history, as well as being unbeatable in Maths. Martin speaks Russian and several other languages fluently, also knows a lot about sports, and is interested in what's going on in the world every day. Robert is very knowledgeable about movies and TV series, names of film directors, actors and so on. And myself - well, I read a lot, I know bits and bobs about history and geography and languages, but there is no area where I truly excel, it is more general knowledge, and lots of trivia floating about in my mind, which is precisely what is needed for the quiz. What we lack of is someone who is up to date with modern music - what is playing in the charts; neither of us truly follows that, so the music questions are always a bit tricky for us.

As we have a favourite round table in a corner of the pub, we call ourselves The Corner Shop.

The Corner Shop has come first in the quiz a few times already, and we're one of the top three almost every time. First prize is a bottle of (relatively expensive) whiskey; I don't drink that, and the bottle usually goes to the team member who made the decisive point. Second prize is four bottles of sparkling wine - now, that is a prize after my own heart! I really like sparkling wine, and with four bottles, I always get one, sometimes even two, because the men say they don't drink the stuff. Last year, my complete stock of sparkling wine for Christmas and New Year came from pub quiz wins. Third prize is two bottles of sparkling wine.

And last night, there were only the three of us - Brian, Gary, and myself -, so we considered it a warming up round. We came 2nd!!!

We really did well, and had it not been for the Lone Star team (our "eternal rivals") being about three times as big as our team, we would have come first. Four bottles for a team of three - well, we decided we keep one bottle each and give the fourth one to the third team, since they were in a tie with us and we won the tie question. They were very pleased and said how generous we are (we were indeed, weren't we!), and much fun was had by all.

It was a great night out with my friends, and I am looking forward to the next pub quiz; of course we can't make it every Tuesday, but I think in about three weeks we'll go again.

Me and my prize, last night.