A Warning About The Colombo Pub Quiz

The week has been dreamily good so far. Mostly. There have been a few mood swings, temper tantrums, hissy fits and hormonal issues, but overall I've managed to keep things under control. By and large the girls, A, K and C that is, have behaved themselves too.

It's nice for the girls to see people who they haven't seen for a couple of years and there has been the usual plethora of the "my how you've grown" noises hitting all their ears at frequent intervals.

Last night I persuaded them that it would be fun to enter a team in the Colombo Pub Quiz at Barefoot. I thought that the four of us would cover a few bases and the addition of a few more chaps, the kind who read newspapers, we might stand a vague chance.

As the quiz began I realised that it's a falsity, a word I'm not even sure exists. I'd expected a decent mix of questions about drums and drummers, perhaps a section on Kottu or the Sri Lankan blogging community, maybe a chunk of questions on rock and/or funk music and possibly, though unlikely, some qs on the current Superdry range of clothing. Simple ones like the price of T shirts and polo shirts, nothing too complicated. I'd even had a glance at the day's papers, well the headlines, in case weird things like current affairs and politics came up.

But bugger me. The first surprise was that there were other teams there. How unfair is that? There was no mention at all in the ads and blog posts about this quiz of competition against other people. Then, these people were serious. The type who read newspapers rather than just look at the pictures of people being tied against a tree by leading politicians. The sort of people who can identify black and white pictures of dead people. The sort who read The Economist and know proper stuff.

We kicked off and promptly lost the first round. We may have come second in it, but the details aren't really important. There wasn't a single, no, not even one, question about drummers, Superdry or blogging. It was specialist stuff like general knowledge, science, sports and whatnot.

As we progressed through the night our team didn't. We stayed bottom of the table until David Blacker turned up with his brain. The combination of him, A and K gained us quite a few points. I caught him and K discussing things earnestly and ignoring the rest of our team at one point. It was a prudent move of theirs.

K came up with the idea of writing little love notes to Jehan at the bottom of our set of answers to each round. It was hard work but effective, gaining us an extra point at one stage. I like to think I contributed significantly, in particular when one question involved naming the missing Teletubby and I knew the answer immediately.

We delayed playing our joker until the anagram round, thinking that we'd do well in it. But in another cruel twist they made them hard ones, names of Hollywood stars and a couple of directors all jumbled up. Bloody ridiculous, jumbling up the letters in a round like that.

The end result?

Well we didn't come last, missing it by two points. I reckon a team of David Blacker with A and K would do better and myself and C could just hover in the background, getting them drinks and food, maybe massaging their brains every now and again to keep things going.

But, the barbecue chicken wings on the Barefoot menu are pretty damn fab, the Lion lager was cold, the atmosphere was balmy, chilled and fun and the night was a fun one.

Tomorrow we hit the hill country for a few days. I'm looking forward to leaving the hustle and bustle and seeing all those greens, feeling that smokiness and the slightly cooler air. Then we'll be back for a few days and off to Londinium again.

It's nice coming from a country like this, really it is.