A Mouthful of Cold Steel and Rust, and Hearty Applause

His splutter was “received with hearty applause”, and he was “kindly told that that was the right answer”. I have been that boy. I had a laminated folder.

It was my third PTA and my first time as quizmaster. I wrote 120 questions in eight rounds, checked every answer against two encyclopaedias and a man at the Co-op who runs the Thursday pub quiz, and laminated the answer sheets in case of squash. The Llanelly team had a quiz book of 729 questions passed round among them. I counted mine and felt good about it, which tells you everything. My husband asked whether I had tried the microphone. I said a microphone is a microphone.

Even the listeners got surprises. Colin Salsbury, an old boy of High Pavement in Nottingham, remembered in The Pavior in 2021 how, as a young RAF wireless mechanic at Coningsby, he tuned a big R1155 receiver to the BBC one morning and found his own old school on Top of the Form. What struck him was hearing strong Nottingham accents on the BBC. His audience, meanwhile, had been busy applauding a cough.

Ours came from the church hall in a hard case, with a cable long enough to reach the car park. I held it close, the way people do on television, and said “Good evening”. It came out as a howl that made a baby cry two tables away. The youngest put his fingers in his ears and kept them there until the interval. In round three I read out an answer instead of a question. In round five I found that the microphone also picks up muttering, and the whole hall heard me tell myself that Canberra was obviously the capital while the Year 6 dads’ table wrote down Sydney.

Then I read out the final scores the wrong way round. The Year 6 dads, who had come last, stood up and cheered. The real winners clapped politely. Nobody corrected me, and the dads took the prosecco home. I had, in effect, been kindly told that that was the right answer.

Next year I am doing refreshments. I have asked to see the urn in advance.