When I was 12 I was part of an absolutely mean school general knowledge team. We were smashing all before us until, like St Edmund, we met our doom in a fearsome struggle at Thetford...
It was a semi-final of an all-East Anglia competition. The questionmaster, for the first time, was a teacher from the opposing school. I still remember the semi-dark classroom, the smugness on his face, the suspicious speed with which our foes answered every question...
I always got the sense that it had been decided we could go no further, as if that would somehow violate some unwritten rules... In any case, the other team felt so unnaturally self-assured that we smelt defeat, and then we were finished...
As you might imagine, I was the brains behind any questions about History, Geography and Literature, while our science mastermind is now a senior paedatrician... But I still feel like we had victory snatched away from us. We could have conquered East Anglia
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