Dances with Squirrels

Quiz night at work - a fundraiser for Macmillan Cancer Support charity is an annual event which, until now I’ve not been able to attend. (a spin off from the Water bombing fundraising event). How hard can it be to sit at a table with work mates, answer a few questions and partake of the buffet. It appears I completely underestimated the complexity and organisation which goes into such an evening.

We arrive and have drinks at the bar (At the Leopald Hotel in Sheffield - a bit posh), all good so far. We trundle into the room for the quiz, laid out with big tables - 10 per table - novelty hats and balloons on the tables. That’s all OK, quite within my capabilities to try on the hat in a comedy manner and bash the balloons around.

There were however, quiz sheets on the table...loads of them. It was like attending an exam - except there was wine. beer, chatting and did I mention balloons. The only question I could answer was related to the Sound of Music. One of the series of questions was ‘name the missing animal form the film title’. It turns out, there doesn't seem to be any films with squirrel in the title, which was unfortunately the only animal that I could think of. It’s a shame because the film “The Squirrel Pit” is just shouting out to be made - I’ll write a letter,  maybe Peter Jackson would be interested.

The room was also wired up with projector, screen, pc and we had interactive clicker things for answering questions. Our allocated team name was scrubbers - with a picture of the tv show Scrubs, could have been worse I guess. 

We had a bit of a quiz, used our clicker and waited our turn for the buffet. As we were furthest away form the door to the food, we did need to take matters into our own hands and perhaps go out of turn to get our food. Unfortunately by the time we got to the buffet there were no sausages left...aaaarg what no sausages. Prawns and chicken and chips had to satisfy. After replenishing our brain cells with carbs and protein, there was a rumour that more sausages were arriving, so we hung around in the buffet room in anticipation, like you do. There was a bit of a tussle but - yes, sausages were acquired for our team. Nobody mentioned the quiz would be exactly like the Hunger Games!

Back to work. More quizzing, a bizarre game of heads and tails which involved pretending to be rabbits and aardvarks, a ‘live’ hook up to Hull football club to hear the results of the picture round, a game of playing card bingo, more questions, the raffle and that was all...phew. Now the only question remains is - what do I do with the bottle of Peach Schnapps I won in the raffle?

A great evening, excellent organisation, challenging questions (we just missed out on the win) and over £1000 raised for an excellent charity. Up next - water bombing...water bombing squirrels? I hope not!

Here's the link for Waterbombing We are Macmillan. Cancer Support.