SUCCESS!!!!
Finally Team Albatross, made up of some people from this parish (me and Ben plus others) finally won a pub quiz. The downside: it was not in our normal pub.
The Harringey Arms is a nice pub. It has a really good pub quiz. But after six months of doing no better than second (and only once) we decided to go on tour. Truth be told the indiosyncracies of the Harringey Quiz had started to get to us. In particular the excessively long time in which each round was allowed to be completed. The more cyncical amongst us, noting excessive newspaper and occsional more than occasional mobile phone use started to get miffed by this factor, part of a quizzes appeal is in the instant(ish) recall. The nice atmosphere in the pub was being soured for us by the same teams winning every week, and the winning scores being only two or three points off of perfect.
So we decided to try the Quiz in The Old Dairy , Stroud Green instead. A big pub, a lot of teams and an indeterminate start time (it said 8:30 on the sign, but once the footie had finished and quiz lady had fannied around we did not start the fifty questions until gone 10pm). The questions were an okay mix of pretty bog-standard quiz questions, toughish but lacking the idiosyncracy of the best Harringey questions. Still there was a picture round (name that author, which our plucking out of the air of Francis Bacon was most cheery). And best of all, a music round which was “Name That Kylie” which certain members of the team excelled at.
But fifty questions take a long time to mark with well over fifteen minutes, and with team members falling asleep (teachers!) it was left to just myself and Ben to see how well we had done. We held out few hopes, after the previous six months. Well, we won. And at a comfortable margin too. Despite the sheet being added up wrong (we got full marks in the Kylie round despite not filling in one answer). The prize giving turned into a bit of a farce as the quiz mistress (a bit too jokey, but clear and fun) was taken to task over the dodgy arithmetic. But we won our gallon of beer and I guess we’ll be back.
But we will scratch that Harringey Itch. Publog Quiz Commando’s may be called in.