Number 25: Host my own pub quiz

Challenge number 25  has been well and truly ticked off, as last night I hosted my first pub quiz at the Marquess tavern in Islington. Having done a bit of stand up and considering myself to have quite a loud voice, I naively assumed that doing a pub quiz would be a doddle. Half an hour into last nights quiz as a red faced Irish man was screaming into my face "whats a fucking Dingbat?", I was beginning to reevaluate that assumption.
My journey into Pub Quiz Mastering began a couple of weeks ago. Whilst scouring the web for any job that would enable me to keep eating, I came across a job description that didn't make me want to kill myself on first read. The next night I'm sat in a pub In Holloway road with Dave and Mike the men behind define entertainment. Basically the lads have set up quizzes in pubs all around the smoke and are doing that well they now need to take on some help. They were satisfied I fitted the bill and for me it importantly ticked off a challenge as well as paid a much needed bit of cash. I mean how hard could it be really. The lads prepare the quizzes, I steam in at 7.45 and let em have it.
The first thing I realised about pub quizzing is that it is quite a serious business to some. A lot of the quizzers in Islington last night were expecting Dave, a genial, relaxed Australian and not a stressed out little Welsh bald bloke who had brought his Dad for support. Whether it was the ten minute wait while I hyperventilated trying to play a song clip or my mispronunciation of the French word for black pudding, some of the punters let me know that I needed to step up. I've never questioned the answer to a pub quiz before but I suppose I was always too arseholed to care by the end anyway.
Halfway through the evening I was starting to flag but then it picked up.I started to throw in a gag or two, the elderly couple who I'd heard say I was badly organised began to smile, the drunk men in the corner stopped challenging every question and the young team who lost by at least twenty points offered me some Monster Munch. They had excepted me! The sneering group of intellectuals who had made me repeat a question four times, started to melt a bit. A table give me two of their milky ways from winning a prize as they could hear my stomach growling. Best of all a bearded old man who had won a hundred pounds treated me and my Dad to a pint.At the end of the quiz I sat a broken man:

But a happy man. Task 25 achieved and some lessons learnt:

Always read the questions through before you do a quiz.If you don't understand them and you are the quiz master, it doesn't breed confidence.
Mother Theresa is from Albania not Austria. This is important.
"Fat kids are harder to kidnap" is quite possibly the best name for a pub quiz team I have ever heard.

So if you are in the Islington area on a Tuesday night, roll down and give me support. Don't enter the quiz though.If you win and they find out you know me, we will both get buried in Hackney marshes.
Slaters xxxxxxxxx

Number 29: Do some volunteering Pleased to be able to tick off my first challenge as I am now officially a fully trained volunteer with Victim Support. It is something I have talked about doing for years as having been a victim of crime myself years ago, I always felt I might actually be of use to someone. Of course,the idea first struck me when I was contacted by victim support as a 17 year old. The volunteer sounded lovely but was clearly an elderly lady. Now, after having completed equality and diversity training I realise I was possibly being very judgemental by assuming that this caring, kindly spoken old lady would have little experience of street fighting. I could be very wrong but I wondered what advice she would offer me on how to get down the shops without being pelted with eggs and bricks for being a grass. Twelve years on I am now in the position to use my empathetic, listening skills with the kids but fear I may now be the out of touch adult on the end of the phone. The beauty and tragedy of Victim Support though is that they don't offer advice. As a volunteer you listen, listen and listen and then pass on some practical information. A valuable service indeed and probably for the best as I do have trouble with realising when to dive in with my opinion and when to keep it buttoned. Anyway, here is a photo of me with one of my victim support training books and the number 29 scrawled on a piece of white paper. Get in there! Of course with David Cameron ushering in the Big Society, I'm sure everyone will be volunteering soon. Whether you want to help victims of crime, keep your local library open or even ensure things are still ticking along in the surgical wards of the local hospital. I fear if I ever have to go under an anesthetic again, the last thing I will see is a chirpy volunteer flicking through a book on heart bypasses as all the surgeons have been laid off. Sweet! One in the bag, 29 to go!

30 things to do before 30

In exactly 150 days I will be 30. I will be considered old enough to be nearing the end of my career if I was a professional athlete, more than old enough to become a Father and little bit too old to go to Magaluf dressed as a Smurf. Before I embrace man boobs and going to Ikea every Saturday I have set myself thirty challenges to tick off. I will be happy to get to July 12th healthy and with all my limbs intact but if I can do this it may slow down my descent into middle age and crown green bowling. Have just worked out that it amounts to doing a challenge every five days so I had better get cracking. I will complete them in random order and try to record some video or photo evidence to upload on here. The challenges are:

1. Do a sky dive
2. Learn more about the middle east.
3. Run marathon distance.
4. Swim in Hyde park in speedos
5. Write to five people I admire.
6. Learn how to juggle
7. Climb a British Mountain
8. Sleep rough for a night.
9. Do 5000 push ups in a week
10. Run the 100m in less than 15 seconds
11. Learn basic sign language
12. Get an article published
13. Grow something and eat it
14. Learn one impressive magic trick
15. Learn and remember the capital cities of 50 randomly selected countries.
16. Bench press 100kg once
17. Do something nice for someone who genuinely deserves it.
18. Do a charity shop pub crawl
19. Watch the godfather trilogy back to back
20. Cook a three course meal and get marked on it.
21. Learn one impressive magic trick.
22. Hold a friends baby
23. Get a good tattoo
24. Give blood
25. Host my own pub quiz
26. Make a baked alaska
27. Put a 50 quid bet on
28. Make a video for my song male pattern bald
29. Do some voluntary work
30. Do a one hour stand up show based on this list

I ummed and aahhed about trying heroin but thought it would be a bit pricey. If you're reading this and can juggle, are up for climbing Ben Nevis or Snowdon, want to run a bit of the marathon with me or have a certainty for the bet give me a holla.

Thanks for reading, have a good Saturday. Slaters xxx

Hello

Alright? Welcome to what I hope will be a waste of neither of our lives, rather a bit of a laugh and an opportunity to share a bit of writing. I have had an account on here since 2008 and haven't actually written anything, hence the title. I have always feared blogs a little bit, mainly because they can sometimes sum up how self involved people have got these days. I will endeavour to always write something entertaining and amusing up here and steer clear of updating you on my eating habits, opinions on things I'm not really informed about or intention to self harm.
I am currently looking for a job so the regularity of these updates will differ according to whether I'm interviewing, desperately looking for work or weeping into my duvet and watching Scrubs. I am 30 in five and a half months and that will probably be a recurring feature of these updates.At the moment I am working on a list of 30 things to do before I hit the big one and will post it on here as impetus to actually tick a few off. Most of you will know who I am and what I do but if you don't I aspire to write and perform sketch comedy, have a girlfriend who is far too fit for me and I am male pattern bald.
As you can see the background for this piece is a lovely, bubbly pint of lager. It's not ironic, I do enjoy the taste of lager and will probably have one later.
Cheers for popping in, hope I can brighten up a lunch break or two at some point. Slaters. xx