Quizzing

I LOVE quizzes - and I LOVE winning. So the best thing for a clever-clogs show-off like me is to win a quiz. I know this can be boring for others, even other teams that I go up against. But if you are in a competition, hell you just want to WIN, don't you? I was brought up in the days of competitive school sports days, of choir competitions, of trying to be top of the class. What is so wrong about accumulating knowledge and using that store to have fun? Does Usain Bolt apologise when he's just broken another World record? No!

Anyhow, I was in a (nearly) winning quiz team last weekend in aid of our local carnival fund. The declared aim of the organiser was to have an event which would be fun for everyone, and she mentioned those annoying teams who always seem to win everything. What a challenge! It was a very good quiz, I have to admit - a sort of cross between bingo and Blockbusters (give me a P, Bob?). You needed a line of correct answers to score points, so you can see how they were trying to keep down the "show-offs", can't you? We won one particular round, after which we were entitled to choose the category for the next one. Knowing our strengths we went for "Films and Literature". Pride goes before a fall, they say. We managed to achieve almost a full house of answers without creating a complete line - what rotten luck!!! Worse was to come when we discovered that all our answers were correct!!!!!! Ah well, we did get some extra points for being within 11 years of the date of the oldest surviving working English post mill. Being a historian counts for something... And we scored highly on "name the city where you can see this landmark", since one of our number has been round the world a few times!

So we came second, winning the chocolates instead if the wine. I will comfort myself that I, my husband and two friends (known as the Four Squares) have won the annual village quiz 4 years in a row, and still hold the trophy. And a new pub quiz series we embarked on last month we won first time! If we can hold our nerve to the end of the year we could be sharing £300. Yes, I LIKE winning.