The Love Island controversy

Our pub quiz team, The Unlikely Bawbags, recently suffered its worst-ever performance in The Lorne on a Wednesday night.  We finished in seventh place out of around ten teams, far removed from our usual lofty position within the top three.  It wasn’t even as though we had one terrible round that set us back, because for us the entire quiz was a shambles.  Things were so bad that by the end of the night we almost celebrated ending up so high in the rankings, since for most of the way through we had been sitting bottom of the pile.  It was a chastening experience, one which none of the three of us appeared to have an answer as to how it could have happened, which was seemingly in keeping with the night.

I went to Aulay’s to drown my sorrows, different from my usual visits there drowning my liver.  The lounge bar was empty, which wasn’t unusual for a midweek night in February, and so the barman was forced to listen as I told him of all my woes.  Would I ever get another general knowledge question right again?  Did there really need to be an entire round about Germany?  Why can we never remember who voiced the Bugs Bunny cartoon character?  I imagined that he would much rather have been dusting the tops of the malt whisky bottles, but I had a lot to unload.  To the relief of the barman, the pub gradually started to fill up, at least as much as three people can fill an alehouse.  

First, the Plant Doctor arrived carrying a pool cue, which he propped up against the coat rack, similar to the way that someone who is out walking the dog stops into the pub for a pint and sits their pet at the end of the bar. A while later a local shellfish seller dropped in. Following some discussion over the froth of our lager, it was noticed that there were three people in the lounge bar on a Wednesday night and each of us was wearing a pair of corduroy trousers. Who knows for certain if such a thing had ever occurred before, but it’s difficult to imagine that it had. It was, quite emphatically, a parade of corduroy.

Naturally, we were eager to bring this anomaly of fashion to the attention of the two members of staff behind the bar, and even to Aulay himself.  There were three distinctly different shades of corduroy on show.  I was wearing a vibrant cherry, the Plant Doctor wore a neutral olive, while the shellfish seller’s legs looked like two hot dogs smeared with English mustard.  We asked anyone who would listen for their thoughts on our respective cords, including one poor sap from Glasgow who was just wanting to enjoy a peaceful drink.  All three of the opinions we canvassed came back with the same response:  that the neutral olive was their favourite colour of corduroy and they wouldn’t be seen dead in the bold cherry.  I’ve long become used to suffering a crushing defeat in the month of February, but this was two of them on the same night five days before Valentine’s Day had even arrived.

Hardly two days had passed before I and my pub quiz teammates were afforded a shot at redemption, just like in any big-budget Hollywood movie, only this was a charity quiz at The View with a prize of £100 in cash. The event was a joint effort to raise funds for Kilmartin Museum and Dunollie Museum, two local projects in Argyll, and I somehow ended up in the middle of a tug o’ war between my usual Wednesday night pub quiz team and my regular Friday night drinking partners. I had never honestly wondered what it would be like to be a child caught up in a dispute between two divorcing parents, but I reckon this was pretty close to how it must be, and on this occasion, The Unlikely Bawbags were awarded custody of me.

Following our all-time worst performance a few days previous, we recruited some reinforcements for the charity quiz to bring our numbers up to six; amongst them a Doctor of Scottish literature who had started the week off-piste in Glencoe and was looking to finish it on the piste in Oban.  The theme of the night was anti-Valentines trivia, which we felt confident would suit us since the majority of our team seems to have an allergy to all things romantic.  There were several different rounds throughout the quiz, including the standard music round, film and television bedrooms, one where we were invited to list ten given animals by the length of their penis, as well as a series of questions all about sexually transmitted diseases, which I was really hoping wouldn’t be the traditional picture round.

The quiz was so busy that people were being turned away at the door.  There must have been no fewer than twenty teams taking part, and things were competitive from the very start.  With so many points to tally, it would be impossible to ask one man to mark every answer sheet, so teams were asked to swap their papers with a neighbouring table at the end of each round.  On the face of it, this seemed like a sensible solution, though it turned out to be like asking a couple of barmen for their opinion of corduroy trousers:  problematic.  In the very first question of the quiz, we were asked to name the winner of the 2021 series of the reality TV show Love Island.  Being that we were a team of adults who have seen the better part of our thirties, we couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess at a name and left the space unfilled.  Following the end of the general knowledge round, we exchanged sheets with the table adjacent to ours, whose team included a podcasting phycologist and a young woman who owns a vast wardrobe of scarves.  Much to everyone’s surprise, our paper was returned to us with one point more than we were expecting, while the gap left at the first question had been filled with a careful, scientific scribe.

We didn’t think too much about the ill-begotten point at the time since we were in second place, but as the quiz developed it was becoming clear that there was a tight tussle at the top of the leaderboard between ourselves and my usual Friday night companions.  Our cause was assisted by a full complement of marks in the round on sexually transmitted diseases, which had to be the first time anyone has been happy to correctly identify an STD.   By the time the final piece of music had been played to bring the quiz to an end, the two teams were separated by the length of a flea’s penis – or one point as it’s sometimes known.  We were delighted; the Plant Doctor, my brother and their team were devastated.  It clearly hadn’t required a great deal of detective work on their part to recognise that the beautiful penmanship used for the first answer was entirely different from the scrawl seen at the other sixty-odd questions on the sheet.  I mean, we had an actual GP in our team whose contributions to the sheet read like a prescription pad.

With a prize of a hundred pounds going to the winners and £50 to the runners-up, we could see why our competitors might have felt disappointed. Some of the people at their table had a look on their face that was similar to one I have seen around the pier when a tourist has treated themselves to a fresh prawn sandwich from the seafood shack and just as they’re ready to enjoy it, a sneaky seagull has swooped down and snatched it from their hands. A few of us were feeling some guilt about winning a charity quiz through nefarious means, even if strictly speaking it was only accidental cheating. We agreed that given the circumstances it would be the right thing to do if we came clean to the quizmaster, so we called him over to our table and explained what had happened. To say that he wasn’t interested would be an understatement. As far as he was concerned, the quiz was over and he had already declared us as the winners, which could probably be translated as him admitting that he hadn’t prepared a tie-break question. Maybe he was right. This was a Valentine’s quiz, after all, and it is said that all’s fair in love and war. Where love is concerned, it’s usually the case that one party is going to end up bitterly disillusioned. It just so happened that for once it wasn’t me this time.

Despite a fortuitous turn of events, we had already decided that we wanted the moral victory as well as the acknowledgement of being quiz winners, so we approached our rivals and proposed that we split the £150 prize fund between the two teams.  They agreed, though somehow even that didn’t quench our thirst for redemption – or perhaps more accurately, clear us of our guilt.  I was too busy trying to plead my innocence to the opposition to know who from our team made the suggestion, but it turns out that we went a step further than sharing the prize money and offered to donate our £75 to the charity.  When I heard about our philanthropy, I couldn’t stop wondering how much more we had to do to have our names engraved on a plaque at Kilmartin Museum.

A few of us made the usual Friday pilgrimage to Aulay’s after proceedings had been brought to a close in The View.  There were three members from the opposing team looking to spend their £75 in the final hour before closing time, and I saw this as an opportunity to recoup some of ‘our’ prize money.  All manners of whisky and shots of Tequila were being added to the bar bill, meaning that the most straightforward quiz question of all was posed the following morning when I went for breakfast with the rest of my family and wondered why I felt as though I was still drunk.  Along with the growing bar tab, there was significant jukebox abuse, and not only from us.  I could have sworn that one group played the same Feargal Sharkey song three times in a row.  I guess it’s true that sometimes a good song is hard to find.

It was difficult to say at the end of the week whether I had come out of it all on top or not.  I lost a corduroy-off, though was at least part of a historic fashion event in Aulay’s.  The Unlikely Bawbags had their all-time worst performance in the Lorne quiz, but followed it up by beating around twenty other teams to win a charity quiz, albeit with some controversy attached.  Even now I still don’t know who won the 2021 edition of Love Island, but I think I have learned that in future quizzes when we don’t know the answer to a question, such as who provided the voice of Bugs Bunny, it is best to leave it blank.

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Jagged Little Wordle

Everybody seems to have a Wordle strategy these days.  The web-based game where players are given six opportunities to solve a daily five-letter word puzzle is the hottest trend of 2022 so far, and for once I seem to be in tune with popular culture.  My opening salvo is almost always HOUSE, I believe for as simple a reason as I am usually in my flat when I attempt the day’s challenge and it only has four letters.  In my next guess, I like to use the remaining vowels, since I would have to shyly confess that I can’t think of any words that do not have at least one vowel in them.

The one time that I deviated from my game plan also happened to be the only occasion from 21 puzzles where I have failed to get the correct word.  I had decided to switch from HOUSE to SOARE after reading an article by a language researcher who reasoned that the word for a young hawk is the best option for a first guess because it uses five of the six most common letters in the English language as well as being in a more strategic order than, say, AROSE.  I couldn’t stop from wondering how it must be to be like some of the people I had spoken to who are much more free-spirited with their leading Wordle guess and type the first thing that comes into their head, varying their opening word from day-to-day.  It was difficult to imagine having such spontaneity with words, but I figured I would give it a go with SOARE first and see how things went.  As it turns out, I just couldn’t get the word that day.  I think I was one letter away in the end, but it wasn’t coming to me.  Mostly because the word was one I didn’t expect to encounter in such an inoffensive game.  It was PRICK.  What has life become when even Wordle is goading you?

My introductory Wordle pick has been the same ever since my 100% record was pricked. I’ve rarely thought about it, but I suppose I’m rigidly habitual like that; if something works I tend to stick with it and if it doesn’t I’ll usually avoid it. This is why I have cooked the same adventure-free pasta sauce recipe for the last five years, and it’s the reason why I haven’t accepted a shot of Sambuca since the stuff immediately had me vomiting on the night of my thirty-fifth birthday. On the other hand, it hasn’t stopped me from making jokes anytime I talk to a woman I have met, but there are some habits you just can’t change.

I solved Monday’s puzzle within a couple of attempts while I was taking the bus to Glasgow to see The Districts play that night.  It was my first time at a gig since the summer of 2019, if I don’t consider the time the Edinburgh band Wrest played in The View in November 2021 whilst a 40th birthday celebration was taking place in the adjacent function space.  It’s not that Wrest aren’t a decent act, but I found it hard to focus on the music when there was the sight of several enormous helium balloons emblazoned with the number ‘40’ rising to the ceiling at the back of the room as a member of the bar staff emerged with a buffet of party food.

Saint Luke’s is a repurposed music and arts venue in the east end of Glasgow.  It was originally built in 1836 as a church, and when that was disbanded in 2012 the building underwent an elaborate refurbishment.  There’s a temptation to suggest that the fact my first gig in over two years took place in a former church had some kind of a spiritual significance, but really, it was probably just a coincidence since the show was originally scheduled for May 2020 and was postponed twice due to a global pandemic that has caused millions of deaths.

Adjacent to the old church building is a bar and restaurant, The Winged Ox, where I ate a halloumi sandwich and drank some lager from the nearby Drygate Brewing Company. As far as I can remember, it is the first time I have eaten grilled Cypriot cheese in an establishment that has the statue of a saint perched on the shelf above its bar. Not long after my plate had been cleared away, I was surprised to look up from my pint and see that the four members of the band who I was about to see play on stage were standing at the end of my table, not but a chip’s throw away from me. They must have been there for several minutes. My heart was rattling all the way through my ribcage as soon as I recognised them, and I’m sure it wasn’t just from the Covid I had recently recovered from. I could hear the drummer tell a story about a flight he had missed one time in Germany before they stepped forward to the bar. Each member of The Districts was lined up along the front of the bar, taking it in turns to settle their individual bill. I could hardly believe it. That’s how my brother, sister and me pay for our breakfast on a Saturday morning if dad hasn’t come with us, but this was a touring rock band. Although they are far from the best known musical artists on the circuit, I had always imagined that the rock and roll lifestyle would be different; more glamorous. I never knew that they would have to queue up to pay for their own food at The Winged Ox.

One of the downsides of dining solo is that there isn’t anyone to tell when you see something remarkable occur in your vicinity.  Worse still, if you want to engineer an opportunity to take a picture of a rock band who you have been listening to for six years standing near your table with bar bills in their hands, you are forced to make like you have a keen interest in photographing empty chairs.  I felt ridiculous, especially when I couldn’t position my phone whilst the four men were standing side-on to me so I had to wait until their backs were turned when effectively I would have been as well snapping a picture of anybody. 

Inside Saint Luke’s itself, a mirrorball hangs from the rafters above where the congregation once would have gathered. Part of me likes to imagine that it was there before the refurbishment, unlikely as it seems. I can never grow tired of gigs in former churches. This was my third such venue, and somehow they always sound brilliant. I met with a former Unlikely Lads pub quiz team-mate and her friend before The Districts took to the stage, though as happy as I was to have some great company for the gig, I found myself distracted by the tall man who was standing in front of me. It was impossible to stop myself from staring at the back of this guy’s head, which was covered with long, bedraggled hair the colour of a rabbit’s tail. I had only ever seen hair like it once before, but there was no way that the guy who used to own the Squeeze juice bar next door to Aulay’s was in Glasgow to see this little-known band who pay for their own meals. The resemblance was uncanny, however, and eventually, it was all I could do to unburden myself and ask Hannah if she recognised the man stood a few feet away from us as being someone who I had spoken to a maximum of four times in my life. She couldn’t be sure either, but when we heard his bellowing Northern Irish accent between songs it heightened our interest, and she had to approach him to ask if he had ever run a juice bar in Oban. It was just like being back at the Lorne pub quiz in the days when Hannah would pull out an answer that nobody was expecting, and in this instance, it turns out that the man in front of us was indeed the former owner of Squeeze, though he had no idea who The Districts are and was only there because his friend had offered him a free ticket. So little was the juice maker’s interest in the band that I could swear there was a point where he had fallen asleep on his feet for a few moments.

To the left of the man who once blended fruits for a living, my gig companions were in the midst of their own curiosity.  They were observing a young couple who might well have been the only two people in the entire place who wore face masks the entire way through the gig.  Most others we saw, including ourselves, would put them on whenever we went up to the bar, but these two only ever pulled theirs down for a moment to take a brief mouthful from their cans of cider before fitting them back in place.  In a way, there was something to be admired about the couple’s resilience, and if that’s what they felt was necessary to allow them to enjoy a night out then it doesn’t seem right that anyone should judge them for it.  But when they would bring their heads together and kiss by pressing the front part of their masks to one another, I was incredulous.  Here I was, a man whose chances of receiving affection from a woman are as likely as solving a Wordle puzzle on the first attempt – ZILCH – and then there’s this couple who dared to just throw kisses away against a piece of dirty fabric like they were nothing.  It was a toss-up to say whether the young couple was excellent at hygiene or exceptionally terrible with romance.  

Back in Aulay’s on Friday, some of us were still feeling the effects from Wednesday night when we had been in to watch Celtic’s 3-0 victory over Rangers. The post-match libations were as unexpected as the nature of the win, and I felt thankful that I was at least sensible enough to stick to my principles and refuse the offers of Sambuca, even if I wasn’t quite as strong when it came to the Tequila. On this occasion, we came out to celebrate the 29th birthday of the town’s most elusive barmaid, a woman who seemingly has a different career-changing scheme each time you talk to her, sort of like a Marvel villain.

The Plant Doctor was already seated at a table with a man who I didn’t recognise when I arrived. We learned that Joe is a chef by trade who was visiting Scotland from North Yorkshire for five days with his wife and their young daughter, who is a year-and-a-half old. He is one of the few people any of us had heard describe a child’s age in that way rather than the more commonly used 18 months, and we welcomed it. Joe had left his wife and daughter in their campervan for the evening while he went out to watch his team, Manchester United, play in the FA Cup against Middlesbrough. He had been looking forward to seeing the football while enjoying a quiet pint in a local pub, but as the night progressed he was finding himself watching less and less of the game as he became involved in our nonsense discussions.

Manchester United were leading for much of the contest, though since Joe had fit into the group so seamlessly we suggested that he could message his wife to tell her that the match had gone into extra-time to give him an excuse for spending another half an hour in our company.  He wasn’t convinced that his partner would believe that United were incapable of beating an opponent from a lower league, yet Middlesbrough went on to equalise as we were plotting and that’s exactly what happened.  Joe was shocked at what he was seeing – although he hadn’t seen very much of it at all.  We all laughed at the idea that the Yorkshire man’s wife would receive a text from her husband claiming that Manchester United had drawn 1-1 with Middlesbrough and immediately accuse him of lying to her.  There would be no WiFi reception in the couple’s campervan, while the television signal wasn’t picking up ITV, so she coudn’t check the result for herself.  Ultimately the supposed deception might prove destructive to their marriage, or at the very least Joe was going to be restricted to masked intimacy for a while.

Friday was one of those brilliant, bizarre nights that often occur in Aulay’s.  It had just the right mix of Jameson, good tracks on the jukebox and eccentric out-of-town characters.  As well as Joe, there was a middle-aged couple who were seated in the corner of the pub underneath the television who choked the jukebox with songs that the blonde woman danced her heart out to as her husband took videos.  At one time there were four songs by Alanis Morissette queued up on the playlist.  Meanwhile, when my selection of Be My Baby by The Ronettes played, the woman shrieked and beckoned me to join her in busting some moves.  Her husband didn’t seem to care, although he became agitated when all nine minutes and thirteen seconds of Neil Young’s Down by the River came on.  They didn’t stick around for very long after that, but Joe was there until closing time, several hours after he was supposed to leave.  Something told me that it wouldn’t take much to guess the five-letter word that would best describe his wife’s mood when he returned to the campervan.