Smells Like Victory

All families have traditions. Those rituals to marks the milestones or merely the passing of time. And our family is big on rituals. We're big on a lot of things really. Mostly, we're just big. Like Nana used to say "Rats don't have mice" (Surely Nana could have had another quip that didn't so heavily involve my two biggest phobias???!)

Some of our rituals are big. We do Christmas like a boss, on both sides of my extended family. Meats, fruits, salads, desserts. Booze. New and ingenious ways to give gifts without breaking banks or collecting masses of plastic tat.

We do 21sts with gusto. There are many golden anecdotes of 21st tales. Mystery vomiters. Ugly sweaters. Shocking speeches. Drunk uncles who refuse to let flat mates into family photos (when really. He just wanted to go past to get to the loo).

Our weddings are stylish, our birthdays are feasts. But what I really love are the little ones.

Monday night is usually Fam Din (because we're just too lazy for all the syllables of Family Dinner). A chance for all the family who are in town to eat together.

But I think I like Saturday mornings the best. Coffee, and sometimes eggs, with a copy of the Sydney Morning Herals, bumper Saturday edition. More specifically The Good Weekend section. And The Quiz.

Trivial information seems to stick in my brain. Perhaps it is the allure of knowing something that not many people do. Perhaps it is that narssicistic joy of being right. Perhaps at collective junk of my brain just needs to have some kind of outlet. But trivial pursuits make me happy. When I lived in the Big Smoke, there was no mid week engagement more important or cemented into the diary than the pub quiz with my team, The Paddock Darts & Something Topical/Amusing Club.

Trivia teams require a delicate balance. A mixture of the extroverted and the introverted. Those willing to scribe, and those willing to whisper. Those keen to battle for their answers, and those happy to compromise, and then try not to shout "I TOLD YOU SO!" when the answers are announced. But even more importantly, there needs to be a balance of knowledge and interest. I like the music questions best. All the pop culture ones. Movies, TV, celebrity gossip. I also like the wordy ones - a word that can go before -jack, -box, -ban and -berry to make a new word? They are my favorites. But I am totally shithouse on geography. Mediocre on history. Sub par on fashion and architechture. Pretty rubbish on sport. (*there's too much sport*) But if you can build a team with the right balance, then your team will know no boundaries.

My family team is pretty well balanced. Dad covers off sport and geography like a champ. Mum is a history buff. Yes there are holes in our knowledge, but sometimes our brains trust for that week will fill them in. One brother does medicine, the other does psych and art (and does music a damn sight better than me). Usually we get about 11/15. Some weeks are worse. If we're less than 9, we're not happy with ourselves. If we're over 12, then we're pretty smug.

And we have said for a few years now that if we ever got full marks, we would take ourselves out to dinner.

Last weekend, we nailed it.

Dad rang me with 4 questions unknown. An Oscars one, a TV one, a comedy one and a celebrity one.

Smacked it out of the park.

That night we went to dinner at The Ritz. Tapas and tarts. And it tasted good. And it smelled like victory.


You can do the quiz in The Good Weekend magazine with the Saturday Sydney Morning Herald. Or you can do it on the smh app like I'm going to do right now!