How not to quiz

I knew the quiz was going to be a special one when I arrived.

We won eventually, but in the meantime…

It transpired that paying customers had had the audacity to reserve the room in which we habitually play the game. To be fair Frank the landlord had warned us way back at the beginning of the season that the room was unlikely to be available, and had reserved some seats for us in the back bar.

Now, some five years ago (or thereabouts) when we started using the Royal Oak as our venue, you could have held the quiz anywhere the custom was so sparse. We liked it like that; few people, excellent beer and good food. Of course, word got around and it's very rarely like that nowadays.

We started late: continued troubles on the Northern Line (which are still there this morning), and the closure of Borough Station meant delayed arrivals for several of our opposition team members. The place was crowded and thirteen of us were crammed into a space that would have been tight for eight.

To add to the general jollity, the post-quiz food turned up before the quiz had started, blocking all space on the table. So we started eating it.

Although we were at our usual venue we were the away team in this instance, so all the administration fell to our opponents. We knew we were in for a good one when their captain fell off his chair, refreshed as a ferret. He spilt less than a mouthful of his beer.

The descent into farce continued. Against the general hubbub of a busy hostelry, the opposition selected their quietest spoken member, a man with a thpeech impedimenth to ask the questions.

We stopped after two questions, and ate the rest of the sandwiches.

How not to quiz

I knew the quiz was going to be a special one when I arrived.

We won eventually, but in the meantime…

It transpired that paying customers had had the audacity to reserve the room in which we habitually play the game. To be fair Frank the landlord had warned us way back at the beginning of the season that the room was unlikely to be available, and had reserved some seats for us in the back bar.

Now, some five years ago (or thereabouts) when we started using the Royal Oak as our venue, you could have held the quiz anywhere the custom was so sparse. We liked it like that; few people, excellent beer and good food. Of course, word got around and it's very rarely like that nowadays.

We started late: continued troubles on the Northern Line (which are still there this morning), and the closure of Borough Station meant delayed arrivals for several of our opposition team members. The place was crowded and thirteen of us were crammed into a space that would have been tight for eight.

To add to the general jollity, the post-quiz food turned up before the quiz had started, blocking all space on the table. So we started eating it.

Although we were at our usual venue we were the away team in this instance, so all the administration fell to our opponents. We knew we were in for a good one when their captain fell off his chair, refreshed as a ferret. He spilt less than a mouthful of his beer.

The descent into farce continued. Against the general hubbub of a busy hostelry, the opposition selected their quietest spoken member, a man with a thpeech impedimenth to ask the questions.

We stopped after two questions, and ate the rest of the sandwiches.

His Dark Materials

Why say yes when they come at you with large amounts of money? I can't imagine why. - Philip Pullman

I have largely given up commentating on political issues in an attempt to keep my blood pressure problems within manageable parameters. I still get annoyed by politicians and their unending authoritarian childishness, but only occasionally now do I get outraged by them; my cynicism runs too deep, and my health can't support it.

So today I find myself being annoyed - and no doubt some of you will be outraged - by that other paragon of Mammon and purveyor of the tawdry, Hollywood. Quite as capable of getting the blood up as politicians, but in a more ephemeral and meaningless way.

Today's edition of the Times tells us that New Line Cinema have driven up a couple of truckloads of used tenners and parked them outside Philip Pullman's hose and handed him the keys.
In return, and with his agreement, they now have the rights to film Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Fine.

Except that to avoid upsetting the religious right in the US, the trilogy will be filmed with all criticism of religion excised.

There's really not much left to film, is there?

It is often said that Americans do not appreciate irony. And this is odd since the US is such a rich source of the stuff.

All references to the church are to be banished, says the Times, and the "Authority", Pullman's weak God figure will be altered to represent "any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual".

This is even more bizarre since the trilogy is not even primarily concerned with the nature of religion and belief per se. It barely addresses the issue. It does parody an over-mighty and repressively dogmatic church, and as such is a criticism of, if anything, mediaeval religious institutions more than any individual or personal belief in God. And more to the point, his is an invented church, set in an alternative universe. When the protagonists move into our universe the real church, and real religion is never addressed.

So what is there to upset anyone in the books? Very little, actually when push comes to shove. The man is hardly Erasmus.

So, to keep the increasingly paranoid, unthinking and illiterate bible belt securely buckled, Pullman is co-operating in a revisionist version of his own works which are intended to criticise a system that blinkers individual thought, by removing all reference to the system that blinkers individual thought.

Er…

His Dark Materials

Why say yes when they come at you with large amounts of money? I can't imagine why. - Philip Pullman

I have largely given up commentating on political issues in an attempt to keep my blood pressure problems within manageable parameters. I still get annoyed by politicians and their unending authoritarian childishness, but only occasionally now do I get outraged by them; my cynicism runs too deep, and my health can't support it.

So today I find myself being annoyed - and no doubt some of you will be outraged - by that other paragon of Mammon and purveyor of the tawdry, Hollywood. Quite as capable of getting the blood up as politicians, but in a more ephemeral and meaningless way.

Today's edition of the Times tells us that New Line Cinema have driven up a couple of truckloads of used tenners and parked them outside Philip Pullman's hose and handed him the keys.
In return, and with his agreement, they now have the rights to film Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

Fine.

Except that to avoid upsetting the religious right in the US, the trilogy will be filmed with all criticism of religion excised.

There's really not much left to film, is there?

It is often said that Americans do not appreciate irony. And this is odd since the US is such a rich source of the stuff.

All references to the church are to be banished, says the Times, and the "Authority", Pullman's weak God figure will be altered to represent "any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual".

This is even more bizarre since the trilogy is not even primarily concerned with the nature of religion and belief per se. It barely addresses the issue. It does parody an over-mighty and repressively dogmatic church, and as such is a criticism of, if anything, mediaeval religious institutions more than any individual or personal belief in God. And more to the point, his is an invented church, set in an alternative universe. When the protagonists move into our universe the real church, and real religion is never addressed.

So what is there to upset anyone in the books? Very little, actually when push comes to shove. The man is hardly Erasmus.

So, to keep the increasingly paranoid, unthinking and illiterate bible belt securely buckled, Pullman is co-operating in a revisionist version of his own works which are intended to criticise a system that blinkers individual thought, by removing all reference to the system that blinkers individual thought.

Er…