minor9th.com - a weblog about life and music by Simon Pearson

Non-starter For Ten

posted in Life, London, Pub

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In true grown-up-before-our-time fashion, us Ealing folk have been regularly partaking in a local pub quiz under the genius name of Crouching Woman, Hidden Cucumber for nearly a year. It mainly entails us ending up with a middling score (apart from weeks when there are questions on The Wizard of Oz) and listening to the quizmaster mispronounce all sorts of basic phrases such as ‘Leicester’ and ‘cheese’.

Many a happy Monday evening was enjoyed until the pub introduced a league. A bloody league. The smell of competition drove the hardcore regulars wild: they started sneaking home from work at lunchtime in order to bag a table before the points-hungry masses turned up, leaving us tardy city-types scrabbling for discarded barstools at 8pm. Alas, this week the pub reached capacity, and we had to settle for a non-trivial pint a few doors down instead, where the barmaid was mostly absent and the seat in the corner smelt of sick.

It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts, eh? Right. Whatever.