Quiz Night

One of the great things about living round here is the neighbours, and this is brought home to us regularly when the doorbell rings unexpectedly and someone's on the front step inviting us to something new. This has never happened to me in my entire life before I lived here, and the sense of community it brings continues to surprise and delight.

It's not always the doorbell that brings an invite. I was out picking the girls up last Saturday when Nikki called to say she'd been stopped in the street by a neighbour who'd invited us all to go along with them to a "pub quiz" style evening in Droylsden. I say "style" because it wasn't held in a pub, but in a social centre at the back of an am-dram theatre. Even after seven years' peripheral involvement with Chorlton Players I'm still surprised by how popular amateur dramatics is. Wherever we go we seem to trip over someone else who's involved in one way or another.

Anyway, I digress. We didn't know what to expect, as our neighbour hadn't said anything except we'd be fed for the price of the ticket, and we were leaving between 7 and 7.30. So off we set across the road at 7.30. Arrangements were a little vague, as one set of neighbours had to call in at a relative's house on the way, and the neighbour who'd invited us had to collect her son from the centre of town. We elected to follow her, which proved to be the wrong choice as her driving was more than a little erratic. We were sat in our car with the engine running waiting for her to start off when a car came tearing past. It was several seconds before we realised it was her car, by which time she was already turning right at the end of our road.

I took off after her, and within a very few minutes it became obvious that she was not used to being followed. She'd stop dead in front of us without signalling while she retrieved something from the glove box; turn right across oncoming traffic, leaving us stranded; accelerate through amber lights leaving me to risk penalty points by running some very dodgy amber (not red, honest officer) lights; and once, memorably, turned right against a No Right Turn sign in the centre of Manchester, which I totally refused to copy.

Against all the odds (we had no idea where we were going) I managed on each occasion to catch up with her and eventually, just short of eight o'clock, we pulled into a scabby looking car park next to a run-down theatre building near the centre of Droylsden. Our neighbour, with another neighbour and her son in tow, set off around the building and down a narrow passageway. Just as I was beginning to think we were all about to be turned into pies, she opened an innocuous looking door at the back of the building to reveal a newly-refurbished social club which was already almost full of people.

It had a private bar at one end, a mirrored wall at the other and a series of plushly upholstered seats all around the walls. Roughly in the centre of the room, a DJ's station was already occupied with the quizmaster for the evening. He was selling tickets, which we bought along with some drinks, and took four of the last eight remaining seats.

The quiz started at 9pm, breaking halfway through for hot pot (or cheese pie for the veggies), which arrived in the largest bowl I've ever seen. Very tasty it was too. For a group of four supposedly intelligent people we didn't do all that well with the quiz, ending up with 5 points fewer than the team in third place, but it was a fun night. It became even funnier when the answers were read out. We got as far as question 5: "Which actress wore the same coat in all her films" to which the answer was Lassie. Just as the quizmaster was moving on to the answer for question 6, a very theatrical lady at the back shouted out: "Excuse me? Excuse me?! Some people are making so much noise that we can't hear the answers to the questions. Could you tell me please, what was the answer to Lassie?"

LOL. Err...Lassie was the answer.