January 13th–Away to the British Flag

 

This was to be a tough one – the two teams sharing the top spot separated only by over 80 scored points to the Flag’s advantage. At the first meeting the Lemmings had scraped through by five points. Moreover, Nick was out to prove a point by improving on his recent appalling form – he set himself a modest target of reaching double figures – the team held their breath in trepidation. Moreover his son was there to monitor developments – a lot to lose!!

The pub is owned by Robinsons and has held a good reputation for the condition of its beers for many years and this was no exception – in fact there was an excellent hoppy light beer on that we’d not seen before (but have forgotten what it was called!!!). The team are old adversaries and good friends and the evening was spent in good spirits. One question in particular (56 in the General Knowledge) gave Bob the opportunity to tell one of his favourite jokes – that if the cat had been going the other way Percy Shaw would have invented the pencil sharpener.

The questions had been set by the Knot ‘Arf , old friends again, and covered a wide variety of subjects including the latest additions to the Oxford English Dictionary (neologisms)– but in fact the scoring on both sides was very low, and several rounds passed with no or just one 3 being scored. At the end of the specialist rounds, the Lemmings had slipped ahead with 53 to 38 – a lead of 15!! In the General Knowledge, the Flag fared rather better and steadily ate into the Lemmings’ lead  taking those rounds with 78 to 66.

Nick’s ambitions were demolished throughout the evening – usually very cautious and quick to confer, he was determined to score on the night – and threw away valuable points on several occasions leaving his team open-mouthed at his wrong answers – he equalled his personal worst!!

Final score was 119 to 116 in favour of the Lemmings – a very narrow victory that could so easily have gone the other way

Individual points were Bob 9/15, Wendy 9/6, Nick 0/6 and Tomo 18/12; conferred points were 7/16 with 10/11 pass-overs. The Flag collected 7/16 pass-overs.

Finishing with a fine selection of sandwiches many thanks to the landlord and to the team for a very pleasant evening.