Pub Quiz!

Lara and I went to a pub quiz last night at the Errigle. Such a great start to the week. I had been there about a month ago with the BFG and heard the quiz master asking such things as "Who is the God of mischief and trickery in Norse mythology?" and "If you dial 999 or 112 you can obtain one of six emergency services: Fire, Police, Ambulance and Coastguard. Name either of the other two." Knowing perfectly well that I wouldn't be able to answer correctly more than about an eighth of the questions, I decided that I really needed to go there to drink beer and make up silly replies. Accordingly I had a bath at 9pm - have I mentioned the problems we're having with our shower? - and we cruised down to the pub at about 9:45pm, fifteen minutes before the quiz was due to start. All the quizes here start really late.

We named ourselves the Random Fruit Salad. The process went along the lines of:

"Swede and Kiwi sounds really bad."
"Yeah, hahha, how about Fruit Salad?"
"Oh, I know, Random Fruit Salad!"

There were about ten rounds of eight questions, including general knowledge, music (x2), tv and film, and a picture round, with each correct answer worth two points each. We really did astonishingly badly in most of the rounds - music being the worst, where I don't think we got a single correct answer in either round. (It was all 80s pop, and Lara's into metal. I'm going to suggest name the opera for next week.) However, that didn't stop us gaining twelve points per round(!); I'm not sure if it was our amusing answers, or if the quiz master felt sorry for us, but I like the rules in this country!

Needless to say we didn't win - in spite of our optimism and strong belief in the accuracy of our answers (surely Saxon played at Channel 5's opening ten years ago? They've been around long enough); but Lara did make us an origami swan mascot (pictures soon) (which I gave fangs), and she showed me how to make a tinfoil cake tin for the birthday cake I'm planning to make her next week. (I think I'll just lash out and buy a proper one...) All this led to us agreeing to join forces with the lads at the table next to us. Being Irish they were actually quite good, so we have even higher hopes (mainly of sabotage and beer) for next Monday.

Breaking News

I've just been phoned by Invest Northern Ireland, who are going to shortlist me(!), in spite of my answering one of the selection criteria completely incorrectly. "Demonstrate a practical knowledge of the needs and constraints to competitiveness of SMEs." Hideous question anyway, but I took SME to be subject matter expert, and they meant small to medium enterprise; however, because they didn't spell it out anywhere, they're going to ignore it in my case - wohoo!