The Howling I: The Beginning
Top Five Ain't So Bad
But I have difficulty putting such things in perspective.
And so it doesn't stop me from picking the scabs of scratchy disappointment.
It is now a hallowed tradition.
Ambition and expectation are dangerous things.
At this very moment, I am taking time out from writing more last minute Only Connect question ideas and notes than I can possibly use; many of which will be rejected anway. Probably (Hi David!). And yet I do it in all quiz-setting arenas. But then I have always chucked a lahar-style mud-flume of overwhelming material and preparation at prospective quiz events and setting jobs ... for the old maxim goes: "When we learn for tourneys, we do not actually absorb stuff for the imminent event; we learn for next month, next November, and the competitions that stretch far into the future and beyond into the greying, fraying years of events to come. Never, truly, for tomorrow."
It is just charmed serendipitous luck that something we were reading the day before the Big Show (Mrs Sakharov!), happened to turn up at the most convenient moment in time so very soon after reading/glancing at the hasty scribbles of a man made desperate for wanton fear of disaster (i.e. failing to make the Top Ten).
My participation in this year's excellent Peterborough-staging of the WQC was somewhat knocked a bit skew-whiff, what with arriving five minutes late in a flustered, sudorific state that prevented myself from getting to the church, I mean, school hall on time. This was on account of my inability to orient myself in the city centre after leaving the Peterborough Central Travelodge at 11am. Having asked a mobile phone-eared cornershop-maitresse in St James' Street (???) and then a bored dead-eyed taxi driver in the city centre for location updates, I eventually huffpuff-stumble-ran* down Park Road, arriving in a sweaty, chesty state that no doubt removed five definite points I would have got (or so I kid myself). Procrastination is the thief of UK/Euro ranking points. *I'm in a hyphen kind of mood
But nah. Truth be told, the mild injection of adrenalin, once it had settled down after the 20 minute mark, probably helped excavate a few answers from a mind that was otherwise dying to defy the "Rauchen kann todlich sein" warnings on my Berliner Marlboros (naughtily, my first tobaccy stick, was smoked inside the schoolgrounds; I fear for the returning students who may sense a faint odour in the air of anti-conformity and transmogrify into Paris '68 barricaders as a result. But maybe that's just me thinking about Eva Green again).
God, I babble, do - the World Cup will soon shut me up thank God.
I was going to write more, in fact, I did, but it turned into a crazed diatribe on what the national press think quizzers to be some weird guild of nerdlingers who do written exams for fun (oooh, I remember what you said, Judith, and yes, it was true, so true, but I like 'em).
So, to be continued...
Coming Soon
Trailer for The Howling II: Rain will Fall
The register of excruciating F*** ME that's some F***** UP mistakage there: Why did I not write Adler? (Because I write far too many questions about Carl Jung). Why did I write Bizet? (Because I wrote a Mind Games Q about Carmen in Seville last week).
But I have difficulty putting such things in perspective.
And so it doesn't stop me from picking the scabs of scratchy disappointment.
It is now a hallowed tradition.
Ambition and expectation are dangerous things.
At this very moment, I am taking time out from writing more last minute Only Connect question ideas and notes than I can possibly use; many of which will be rejected anway. Probably (Hi David!). And yet I do it in all quiz-setting arenas. But then I have always chucked a lahar-style mud-flume of overwhelming material and preparation at prospective quiz events and setting jobs ... for the old maxim goes: "When we learn for tourneys, we do not actually absorb stuff for the imminent event; we learn for next month, next November, and the competitions that stretch far into the future and beyond into the greying, fraying years of events to come. Never, truly, for tomorrow."
It is just charmed serendipitous luck that something we were reading the day before the Big Show (Mrs Sakharov!), happened to turn up at the most convenient moment in time so very soon after reading/glancing at the hasty scribbles of a man made desperate for wanton fear of disaster (i.e. failing to make the Top Ten).
My participation in this year's excellent Peterborough-staging of the WQC was somewhat knocked a bit skew-whiff, what with arriving five minutes late in a flustered, sudorific state that prevented myself from getting to the church, I mean, school hall on time. This was on account of my inability to orient myself in the city centre after leaving the Peterborough Central Travelodge at 11am. Having asked a mobile phone-eared cornershop-maitresse in St James' Street (???) and then a bored dead-eyed taxi driver in the city centre for location updates, I eventually huffpuff-stumble-ran* down Park Road, arriving in a sweaty, chesty state that no doubt removed five definite points I would have got (or so I kid myself). Procrastination is the thief of UK/Euro ranking points. *I'm in a hyphen kind of mood
But nah. Truth be told, the mild injection of adrenalin, once it had settled down after the 20 minute mark, probably helped excavate a few answers from a mind that was otherwise dying to defy the "Rauchen kann todlich sein" warnings on my Berliner Marlboros (naughtily, my first tobaccy stick, was smoked inside the schoolgrounds; I fear for the returning students who may sense a faint odour in the air of anti-conformity and transmogrify into Paris '68 barricaders as a result. But maybe that's just me thinking about Eva Green again).
God, I babble, do - the World Cup will soon shut me up thank God.
I was going to write more, in fact, I did, but it turned into a crazed diatribe on what the national press think quizzers to be some weird guild of nerdlingers who do written exams for fun (oooh, I remember what you said, Judith, and yes, it was true, so true, but I like 'em).
So, to be continued...
Coming Soon
Trailer for The Howling II: Rain will Fall
The register of excruciating F*** ME that's some F***** UP mistakage there: Why did I not write Adler? (Because I write far too many questions about Carl Jung). Why did I write Bizet? (Because I wrote a Mind Games Q about Carmen in Seville last week).
posted by That Quiz Guy at 2:50 AM
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