I went back to the same venue as yesterday this evening, for another 2 science lectures by Imperial College, London.

They were about dead clever stuff to do with ‘ dark matter ‘ and quantum physics, but given in the very large back room of a pub ( and to an evidently quite scientifically qualified audience – well with the exception of my buddy, Mark, and myself )

At the end of the lectures the audience were all invited to take part in the also very scientific quiz, which took the form of 6 pages of questions and pictures and formulae etc.

Mark and I filled in answers to the 37 questions over the next half an hour, after which we had to swap our papers with another table, for the marking bit, after which our paper got handed back to us.

There then followed an ‘ anybody get more than 10 ?’ opening question, at which most of the room put their hands up.
The number of marks question slowly increased to ‘ anybody get 30 out of 37?’ and Mark’s hand was still up..along with 3 others.

There was tension in the room as it rose to 34 – one other guy plus us.

At 35 the other ( very nerdy looking ) fella put his hand down, stood up and clapped Mark and I – pretty good, given one of us had been written off in Toulon hospital less than 3 years ago as being very unlikely to recover speech and rational thought.
The rest of the room joined in and the applause became almost embarrassing.

When I say almost, it was because I’d actually blagged our way in there, saying that I’d bought tickets on line, when in fact I hadn’t ( as it had said it was SOLD OUT )

That and the other thing.
That, despite the organisers all being INCREDIBLY intelligent, they hadn’t factored in the morality of a Welsh guy in the room who’d been there the night before, where they’d had the SAME quiz sheet of 37 questions, and had remembered all of the answers.

The bloody bare faced cheek of Mark Pritchard, to climb the stage and accept the prize (usual collection of goodies – plasma TV, new lap top etc ) was nothing short of impressive…