Monthly Archives: October 2006

No, not me – my brother.

Grandad’s Ashes, published February 2007 but available on pre-order now. Also from Amazon.

Yes, he’s called Mike, but he decided to publish under his middle name.

I, for one, will be buying several thousand copies.

brainy-royal.jpg
Originally uploaded by avaragado.

My money’s on the dead one.

Wednesday night is quiz’n’bingo night at the Fleur. I usually pop down, even if I’m on my own, as it’s fun to watch and listen even when not actively participating. My usual quizchum, Andrew, is unwell at the moment so I texted another friend, Robert, wondering if he might like to join me.

He arrived just minutes before the quiz started. We took a snap decision to pay our two earth pounds and join in.

Two hours later: he’d won both rounds of the bingo (two bottles of wine) and we’d won the quiz (£48).

The general knowledge and news rounds are always relatively easy – we got 10/10 and, I think, 9/10 on those, with a couple of inspired guesses (who’d have thought Netto only came to Britain in 1990?). The picture round is usually a 6/10 or so, but this week was an easy 9/10 (I think I must have been the only person in the room to get Denis Law and Mark Nicholas). The two ‘top five’ questions are always hit and miss. This week’s were on the top five foreign holiday destinations for Brits – Robert rattled out the correct five faster than I could write – and the five Pink Panther films starring Peter Sellers when he was alive, of which I could name four straight off, and plucked the fifth from the dark crevices in my head just in time.

So that was 38/40 or so, above average. And then came the music rounds, worth another 30 points.

First, song titles. This is usually early 90s rave or Kylie or Madge or some obscure fifties/sixties tracks, in which I sit back and let Andrew or others scratch their heads and scribble the answers. This week’s songs included such gems as Puppy Love and Save All Your Kisses For Me. Even, would you believe, Ernie, Fastest Milkman in the West. I think we got about 10/15, some famous songs too familiar to have titles in my head (you know, the electric burpy one with no lyrics that goes bip-bap-bip-bop-boop-bap-boop). I was, however, ashamed not to get Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep.

Second, band or artist names. And lo! Early-mid eighties. Robert got most of them from about the second beat. I mean, Culture Club. Wham. There were a few inspired guesses too: Mike and the Mechanics, for example. We got 11/15 I think.

Total: 59/70. But, I thought, surely it was all too easy this week. I expected to be fourth or fifth with the winner in the sixties. The result: we won by a single point.

With Robert’s two bingo wins (he was so embarrassed at winning once, let alone twice – I don’t think he’d ever played bingo before), we’d performed the legendary quiz’n’bingo full house. It is, clearly, all downhill from here.

“Hello,” says my Palm Vx. “Have we met before? I don’t think so.”

“Oh,” says Avaragado. “Oh dear. It seems I’ve left you off your charger for a bit too long. Never mind, I did sync you regularly, I’ve probably lost almost nothing.”

Thinks.

Thinks some more.

Remembers buying a new PC in July without a serial port.

Remembers not actually getting round to buying that USB/Serial adapter for the sole purpose of backing up his Palm.

Remembers that he bought the new PC partly so he could turn his old PC, after a disk failure, into his new server.

Twigs that the failed disk on the old PC contained the last backup of his Palm.

Glares at the failed disk adorning his bookshelf, nestling under some Star Wars lego.

Hmm. I think/hope I might have an old backup somewhere. But it won’t have that, or that, and probably not that either.

Avaragado’s first law of backups: even if you back up everything, you won’t back up everything.