How To Ruin The Pub Quiz

The last couple of days have been largely unspectacular. No stories of wild parties, crazy car crashes or tons. Work on Monday was of the 'distinctly average' variety, and the Chicken Chow Mein that I bought afterwards, simply was not. It tasted more like the bottom of the wheelie bin if I'm honest with you. Today has been full of laziness, despite waking up at 8:45 to deliver the Mittenmobile to Uncle Mick, (who doesn't do exhausts), to fix a squeaking wheel nut. This was before a quick cricket practice facing a bouncy new cherry that proceeded to hit my thigh, my thumb and the peak of my helmet before I came out citing, 'Shitting My Pants' as an excuse. I know it's useless, but no pitch in Bedford bounces as high as that net, rendering that net as, 'completely pointless'.

Anyway. I have not come on here to complain about the heap of junk that is, to be honest, the Mittenmobile, (shhh, don't tell anyone!), or the bouncy nature of the nets at Bedford Cricket Club, but instead the awkward and annoying atmosphere surrounding what used to be a fun and enjoyable event. The pub quiz. It used to be a bi-weekly event, with the same small group of people, that was a laugh and although we rarely won anything due to our age being a steep barrier amongst questions that required wisdom, it was good fun.

Now, about 12 people come along, making the deciding of teams seem like picking the teams in a Year-4 lunchtime football match. The battle of the minds would begin in deciding who would get the brainbox of the group, (Adam), before the non-verbal fighting would take place to decide who would avoid being with the certain people of the group who are not as intelligent as the others. What we usually end up with, is one team of fairly clever people, (including Mr.Brainbox), and another team of, "the rest". It is quite harsh to use the term, "the rest", as our intelligence levels aren't exactly galaxies apart. Tonight, we ended up in 2 seperate sides of the room with myself, Brainbox, Kettle and 3 others against the other team that shall remain nameless, except for their team name, which was, "It's Not Having Adam, But The Taking Part That Counts"... How childish.

And ironic. Throughout the pub quiz, as I glanced across at their table, I saw one particular person constantly on their phone. They claim they are texting, but if you're texting for the whole duration of the quiz, you either have a particular emergency to deal with, or you are cheating. Now, I won't lie, I have texted someone for an answer before, on a couple of occasions, but not every single week. Every single week, this team somehow get a good amount of points, (by using Google on their smartphones), that puts them in contention for money, and every single week, this team answers questions correctly that very few other teams get right. For example, tonight, they somehow managed to know a 1960's TV programme that starred some guy called Millicent Martin and Shirley Ann Field. The film was called 'Alfie', (yes, I have just researched that). There is no way on God's Green Earth that someone aged between around 20 years old, can possibly get that. And then they have the cheek to claim they were texting someone. It's just stupid.

I'm contemplating not going again. I don't see why I should waste money in participating and buying drinks etc, when an argument almost breaks out over teams, and then they go and cheat anyway. It makes the whole event really very awkward and annoying, and most importantly, takes the fun out what should be a good, sociable evening.

Rant over.