Varsity

I like a good quiz programme. Not one that is slow and dressed up in frilly entertainment  but a quiz programme that gets straight to the questions and values knowledge.

Here in Great Britain, the BBC hosts a weekly quiz show called "University Challenge" in which teams of four students from different universities battle against each other for supremacy. The questions are broad and pretty difficult ranging from astrophysics to the poetry of John Donne and from Formula One racing cars to the life of Alexander the Great. You never know what you are going to get.

It is an institution in this country though the programme fell into abeyance when the first quizmaster - Bamber Gascoigne - retired in 1987. The BBC resurrected the show in 1994 and since then the quizmaster has been Jeremy Paxman who will sadly retire this year because of his ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease.

"University Challenge" is one of my favourite television shows and every week I manage to correctly answer a handful of questions - sometimes ones that the contestants fail to get. 

Some brilliant young men and women have appeared on the show displaying amazing stores of knowledge but there are also panellists who contribute very little indeed and you wonder what they are even doing there.

It is such a part of our modern culture that there have been several spoof versions of it, such as this one from six years ago:-

And this one from even further back in time which I believe was first screened in May, 1984 as an episode within a very popular anarchic comedy show called "The Young Ones" which incidentally I mentioned just the other day when I encountered my old friend Neil:-

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The Kindness Of Strangers

 

The film lecture and discussion was animated and informative. It was also fun and three hours flew by like a swift in summer. I was put into three break out groups , the last of which was dominated by a very chirpy lesbian from London who stopped us in our tracks by inviting us all to an on line meeting directly after the  class was over. Her reasoning was to celebrate the birthday of one of our “classmates” a chap called Paul whose 68th birthday it was today.

He’s on his own and if you you are free for a bit , grab what drink is in your fridge and pop along she yelled excitedly 

And that’s exactly what 35 of us did, much to Paul’s tearful surprise.

Various hastily opened bottles of wine, gins, a few coffees, and one very indulgent bottle of bubbly from a rather exuberant chap from Buxton were decanted and I found a tin of espresso martini in the fridge which I emptied into one of my antique champagne glasses before we logged in to meet again. 

Even the lecturer joined in and it was the silliest and sweetest thing I have done in a long time.

At one point Paul, ( who was a retired charity worker from Wimbledon ) made an impromptu speech sharing how depressed he had become over the winter and how cinema in particular had kept him going in the bleakest of moments and he asked us to raise our glasses when he quoted Jean luc Goddard and said“ Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world” 

And from all over the UK came the chink of glasses.

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Film Nite

 This morning I took the first collection of money collected from the Memorial Windows to the clerk of the TCA at the Saturday coffee morning . 

As usual all the tables were full, and I could see as well as cake , there were homemade sausage rolls on the menu. 

Mrs Trellis put one in her handbag.

I said hello to a few people and collected another two sponsorships before coming home, I have an on line film course starting at 1pm.

The next event for the TCA Is a film night, which was the brainwave of Bridget who has secured a projector and a screen. Unfortunately I’m working night shift on the 29th but I will try and change it. 

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It’s still cool but there is a bright blue sky over the village.

One of the ponies neighed at me when I got home .

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