Team Next Door

Now, I wouldn't like everyone to think that we spend all our spare time in the pub. Oh no, sometimes we sit on the sofa and read books or watch a DVD, very occasionally we turn the TV on and wince through all four channels (yes, we have only four!!) and then turn it off again until the news comes on.

But twice this bank holiday weekend we have found ourselves in the pub. It's a wonderfully congenial place, there are always people to chat to, and Smurf and his business partner Mark will always be ready with a joke or some gossip.

On Friday I particularly wanted to see if our neighbours R and S could spare the time to come with us, because a "For Sale" board had appeared on their house, and I was wondering where they were thinking of moving to. It turns out that a house three doors away has come up for sale, so they weren't thinking of moving very far! The market at the moment is terrible, so there are a million ways it could NOT happen, and only one precarious route to success for them.

We also got chatting to another local chap, whom we knew only as much as saying hello while he was painting the exterior of another house down the road. Our house is in need of external painting (and a whole lot of other maintenance) so I wondered if that was his full time job. I have his card, and will get in touch after the exams...

I came home suffused with a rosy glow, not just from the beer but from the act of social intercourse. Chatting to the people who live around you and getting to know them better produces that sense of community that politicians talk about as if it will stop all crime and produce world peace. In reality I know that if I need a favour, there are quite a few people I could ask, and I'd take any opportunity to help them out.

Last night we returned to the pub because they were putting on a quiz. With only two of us making up our team, we knew we didn't have a chance - there are huge gaps in our general knowledge concerning all forms of sport, music since 1990, and anything on the TV that isn't in the ten o'clock news. We know the names of all the BBC weather forecasters but not a single band that's in the charts.

Well, our fortunes were mixed. 'Team Next Door' scored zero out of ten in the music round, and would have been similarly stuffed in the sports and leisure round without a bit of illicit help from Mark - apparently, the first match that was settled on penalties in the 1984 European cup was Liverpool against Roma. But we also got lucky. One of the rounds was putting names against pictures of classical and modern authors, another was all about science, and the last round was a bonus one where you gained an extra five points if you got eight questions right and none wrong. We came first, and won forty quid!

So that was very nice, but I usually play badminton on a Monday so we may not be able to return in a fortnight and defend our title. And today it's back to the world of revision: Biochemistry, and the biosynthesis of lipids and nucleic acids.