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say.
    ‘Testing, testing,’ says the publican
into his mike. ‘Who received the best-actor Oscar in the film?’ I whisper.
    ‘Tom something?’ says Andy.
    ‘No, actually it was F. Murray
Abraham,’ I tell him. ‘The bloke who played the baddie.’
    ‘Salieri?’
    ‘One two, one two,’ says the
publican.
    ‘Did anyone mention New Year’s Eve?’
    It just slipped out.
    ‘No,’ Andy says.
    ‘I’m really sorry.’
    ‘You got drunk. You tried to play the
bagpipes. End of story,’ says Andy, fidgeting a bit in case we miss the first
question.
    God, the bagpipes! What can have
possessed me? The irony is I hate the sound of bagpipes, but I think I must
have seen one of the presenters on Blue Peter try it once.
    So that’s that.
    I’m sure there’s something further to
be said, but I don’t know what it is.
     
    Differences between men and women:
    1. Bearing grudges.
    If Andy were a woman sitting next to
me, the silence would imply that I have not yet paid my penance, and that I
need to prove myself in some way before being forgiven. But it is quite
possible that Andy is thinking nothing at all. When a man says he’s thinking
about nothing, he often really does mean it. If a woman says nothing when you ask
her what she’s thinking, it means there is an agenda as long as your arm.
    I think it must be genetic. If you
tell a six-year-old boy off, he’s forgiven you by the end of the next playtime.
If you tell off a girl, she’ll scowl at you until the end of term.
     
    What do I see in Andy? Michelle’s
always making me list the pros and cons as if he’s a spending decision. The
trouble with Michelle is that she’s never had a relationship that lasted beyond
the first trimester, so she doesn’t know about the matter of just getting
along, which is all most people want.
    He’s good looking enough, intelligent
enough. Presentable, is my mother’s word. He’s sensible with his money, but not
fundamentally mean like so many men. And when we win a quiz and he smiles at
me, it feels zingily right. When we win, Andy and I are ‘in love’, which is
great because it happens every week, so it’s a bit like renewing our vows, like
celebrities do in Hello! magazine when they’re stuck for a bit of cash.
Without the flowers and the priest and Caribbean island and all that stuff,
obviously, although the publican is Irish, and this week, because he’s had a
crate of Malibu delivered by mistake, he’s got an offer on cocktails and he’s
wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
     
    We win! We are in love, and I have
redeemed myself, if I needed redeeming, because I knew that the most populous
city in North America was Mexico City, not New York.
    And Andy’s supposed to be the expert
on geography!
    I didn’t tell him that Richard Batty
read it out of a Key Stage 2 book the other day. I just sort of sat there
smiling, as if it was my native intelligence.
    I do have native intelligence as a
matter of fact. It makes me good at knowing what sort of answer they’re looking
for. For instance, I know that the answer is unlikely to be New York because
that’s what everyone would think. So even if I hadn’t had inside knowledge, I
might well have guessed Mexico City.
    Actually, I probably would have said
Chicago or Miami, if I’m being totally honest.
     
    *
     
    Our prize is a bottle of Malibu, which is fine because I can put it into the next tombola at school, and will feel
like I’m doing something for charity. Last week it was a big jar of pickled
eggs, which Andy appropriated because he said he knew someone who liked them.
He confessed later he’d been referring to Honey but didn’t want to say in case
Paddy was offended. I think pickled eggs is probably worse than dog food,
myself, but it’s the winning that counts not the taking prizes!
     
    ‘Mexico City!’ says Andy, admiringly,
as he bends forward to take the first slurp of his second pint without lifting
the glass from the table.
    Does everyone have particular