One Man and His Blog

It’s been a while since Pub Quiz Man had an outing. But last night, he was back with a vengeance and ready for a fresh adventure. Unfortunately, what had sounded like being a fairly large team had dwindled over the previous 48 hours to just me and my friend Becky. But everyone else missed out – not just on the quiz element, but on one of the most strangley hilarious nights I’ve ever witnessed.

To cut a long story short, there’s a big pub quiz on Monday nights a one of our nearby hostelries; it’s hugely popular, but very difficult to win, and the prizes are, frankly, a bit crap (open a mystery box – you might win some money! Or a tin of tuna! Or, er, nothing at all!). So the discovery of another pub nearby also doing a Monday night quiz – but this one with a definite cash prize, wooo!! – made us think it was time to try a new challenge.

We’d been tipped off the quiz started at 8, so Becky and I both arrived about half 7, had a drink and a chat and noted how strangely quiet and empty the pub was, considering there was a quiz imminent. It transpired the quiz was actually at 9, not 8, so we just kept chatting and psyched ourselves up for it. At about five past nine, with still no sign of anything happening, we checked with the bar staff – yes, there was a quiz on. About ten minutes later, the quiz master came round to explain how it worked for our benefit. Worryingly, his explanation took in several different variations of rounds, extra rounds, odd puzzles and so on, culminating with the words, “and then eventually, we finish sometime around Friday morning…”

And then we finally got started. Quite early on, we noticed the quiz master’s gentle, whispering tone, wich was kind of reminiscent of David Attenborough commentating on a snooker match. We also noticed some slightly ridiculous questions, none more so than the first question of the first round. The round was entitled ‘Star Wars’, and the opening question was: “which series of films is set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?” I almost wondered if it was a trick question, and considered putting the Lethal Weapon films as our answer…

Well, we got off to a fine start and at one point were even in the lead. However, a double whammy of sport (mostly about American football and baseball, two sports that are very much non-mainstream in the UK) and history left us struggling somewhat. Then came a round in which a correct answer would give you another point but an incorrect answer would see you lose a point – but you had the option of not answering any of the questions if you wanted. All the while, the quiz master continued to very quietly come out with random announcements like, “and here’s question number two, which comes after question number one and occurs just before question three, although it’s still a long way off question eight…”

Finally, all the points were added up and, out of the seven or so teams taking part, we were pretty much slap bang in the middle. However, two teams had finished with the same score and were set a tie-break question, which caused some controversy as the quiz master struggled to do the maths and work out who was closer due to forgetting that BC years were further back in time than AD years. So well done, winning team. But wait – there’s more. Despite the fact that one team had apparently just won, we were then asked another question – what is the capacity of Wembley Stadium for an American football match?* – and everyone put forward an answer. At which point, the team who came closest got to choose from two cups and win what was under the one they picked. And so, it came to pass that the apparent “winners” of the quiz didn’t seem to actually win anything, while some other people who’d taken a lucky guess at one question walked off with the princely sum of £19.

All in all then, it was a confusing and frequently surreal evening, and by the end of it Becky and I still had no idea what had just happened. But we had laughed a lot and enjoyed the competitive element – even if we still had no idea how the quiz actually worked – and I suspect there may be a return visit soon. Maybe we’ll just keep going back until we actually understand it.

* 86,000 – in case you ever get that question in your own local made-up-as-it-goes-along pub quiz.

Sometimes God says “yes”.
Sometimes God says “no”.
Sometimes God says “yes, but not yet”.

Unfortunately, I’m not always very good at telling them apart. So – as has happened recently – I might think God’s saying “yes”, only for it then to seem that He’s actually saying “no”. At which point, of course, I become convinced that He must have actually been saying “yes, but not yet”.

But then there are two problems. The first is that I’m still not sure that I’m actually hearing God right. And the second is that I’m so impatient, the “not yet” bit does my head in. And tonight it’s *really* doing my head in.

…but quite busy this week. I promise at some point I will catch up with blogs (both reading and writing), but I have lots to do and lots on my mind. In the meantime, a few quick points that have come up since I last posted:

- regardless of what flavour it’s supposed to be, all baby food smells like feet.
- God has a funny way of putting the right person in the right place at the right time.
- our cleaner rearranges the furniture and our landlord does our washing up.
- Braveheart is (for my money) one of the cheesiest films ever made.
- there’s no pleasing some people.

That’s it for now. Off to bed. Goodnight.

So last night we had our second evening service, and although we didn’t have the enormous turnout of students we’d had last week (it turns out the unis’ CU have organised for the freshers to do a tour of all the major local churches until the end of October, at which point they’ll all decide where they want to go) there were still a few students showing up.

Well, before the service I was standing about chatting to my friend Stephen and, as often happens when we start talking, it got a bit surreal. We ended up having a huge discussion about when, if ever, it is appropriate to go to church simply with the aim of finding a wife, and Stephen was telling me about one of his friends who had done exactly that. But the exact phrase he used was “capturing a wife”, which summoned up the idea of traps and nets and all manner of probably inhumane methods. This is a fairly typical Steve and Stephen conversation – starts sensibly enough, and then goes a bit daft and borderline inappropriate.

Anyway, it was at this point that our pastor came up to say hi to us, and then added, “guys, there are some new students over there, you might want to go and chat to them”. Now, I’m all for trying to welcome people, and I definitely think we should make an effort to talk to new people (or even people who aren’t new but who we don’t really know yet), but it is something I find really difficult and get quite self-conscious about. And Stephen and I thought about it for a moment, and then reasoned that, even with the best of intentions, it might be a little dodgy for two 30-year-old men who have just been having the conversation we had just had to go up to three 18-year-old girls and say, “hey ladies, do you come here often?” (Of course, we would’t really phrase it like that… we’d probaly be less subtle…) So we stood there for a while, wondering what we should do, and then a female friend of ours went over to introduce herself to the students and we sighed a big sigh of relief.

Incidentally, after the service some of our regular lads in their late teens were trying to summon up the courage to go and talk to the girls… although they insisted it wasn’t like that… they were just going to say hello and make friends… honest…

Yesterday we had our first evening service at church in some time. As I understand it, there used to be an evening service a long while back, but it stopped shortly before I moved here (five years at the end of this month – blimey, where does the time go?!). Well, now we have our own building, and have been seeing a bit of an increase in numbers over the last year or two, we’re going to have evening services again.

It seems that there may have been a bit of promotion for this at the various universities in town, seeing as how we had about thirty or forty students turn up for the first time. It being a large church, I’m used to not necessarily recognising everyone there – but even by my usual standards, I was left thinking, “where did all these folks appear from?!” – in a good way, like. But there were also plenty of regulars. It was all a bit exciting, and it’ll be interesting seeing how it develops over the coming weeks and months.

Yesterday was also interesting for me, as I had something of a baptism of fire in my new role on the technical team. I only agreed to do it on Thursday, so I hadn’t really had time to do any training. Thankfully, there were a few people on hand who knew what they were doing, and I picked it up quite easily. In a nutshell, my role involves working the laptop that puts all the songwords, notices and suchlike up on the screens. And, I have to say, it was a whole lot of fun. There’s a large element of seat-of-your-pants to it – particularly during worship, when you have new songs you’ve never heard before and older songs where the worship band may choose to go on to the next verse, back to the last verse, or somewhere entirely different, and you have to get the right words up on screen quick – but thankfully that was more exciting than nerve-wracking. In fact, I can’t wait to do it again next month.

So, all in all, I think these evening services are going to be A Good Thing. Hurrah!

This is a quick “need somewhere to let this frustration out” post:

I have woken up this morning to a bit of a sneezing and runny nose thing. This happens quite often, particularly when the weather’s been a bit changeable, as it has this week. Unfortunately, I have nothing handy to blow my nose on. There is a box of tissues in the lounge – but Chez is asleep on the sofa as she has a friend staying in her room. And I can’t go and get some loo roll because another of my housemates is in the shower. So I’ll just have to sit here and drown in snot for a while. Lovely.

More substantial (and hopefully more pleasant) post to follow later.

First off, thanks to those of you who said you were praying, and anyone who didn’t say they were praying but did anyway. How did the Scary Thing go? Hmmm… well, not entirely the way I hoped it would, but I guess it could have been a whole lot worse. Without going into too many details, it left me somewhat disorientated, but I’ve now had some reassurance that things are OK and no lasting damage has been done, and I’ve been able to discuss and dissect the whole thing with my housemate Chez tonight, which has helped me no end. Yes, I know I’m still being vague, and I’m sorry about that, but sometimes the internet can be too public to share absolutely everything. So I’ll just say, it was horrible but necessary and we’ll wait and see what comes of it.

So let’s move on. As I type this, there’s a report on the news about the American presidential election. According to the most recent opinion polls, Obama is now 9 points ahead of McCain. This heartens me no end, as I’ve been backing Obama since the start. What I found interesting lately was the difference in thinking between Americans and the rest of the world; in a recent international poll some 80% of non-Americans apparently backed Obama over McCain, yet in America the polls have been pretty much neck and neck and, if anything, McCain has appeared to have a slight lead. It’ll be interesting to see what happens…