We are going to the pub tonight, to participate in the weekly ritual of the great British “Pub Quiz” with some friends. W insists she will be okay even though she’s been off work for three days with a cold and cough. I came home early from work today after picking up medicine for her at lunchtime.
After the week I’ve had, I’m quite looking forward to just going to the pub - let alone doing the quiz. I’ll have to keep an eye on Wend though - mixing cough syrup with alcohol is probably not a very good idea.
For those who have never encountered a Pub quiz, the evening entails wandering down the road to our favourite/local bar, where at about 9pm the landlord gives out question sheets to tables wishing to take part. You make up your own team names and answer 50 or so questions read out across the speakers in the pub, and then mark each other’s sheets. The top prize is several bottles of nice wine, which we have won in the past.
Accusations will almost certainly be made that the other teams cheated. Forget the fact that we will use our mobile phones for at least one or two of the questions - anybody who cheats more will be a “proper cheat”, and we should deserve the victory more. This is the twisted logic of the pub quiz team. We will also pour scorn on the “news” round, where the questions will be lifted from a tabloid newspaper (full of stories about Britney’s knickers, and Paris’s latest beau). We will claim that had they used a broadsheet, we would have won easily.
I just feel like I need to get out - see friends I’ve not seen for some time, and step outside the life I have had for the past several weeks. Catch up with them. Listen to their stories. Be somebody other than who I have been recently.
Maybe I might even start to remember who I used to be - you know, the happy go lucky guy who found good in everybody, and took interest in everything.
p.s. the adoption services people are visiting tomorrow en-masse. Our social worker, the children’s social worker, and a third party. I guess we better not drink too much this evening…