Once More Into the Breach.

Some evenings just don't go quite as you expect them to, do they?
Yesterday evening, was one such evening.

Together with my wife & some friends, i went to a quiz night. This was organised by & took place at, St Michael's Hospice, very close to my home.
I have quite possibly mentioned St Michael's Hospice before, either in blogs, or vlogs. As with any Hospice, or charity, they are always in need of more money. So, i am only too happy to try & help them out when i can. Last night was a great opportunity to do just that.

The evening started off fairly normally. Although the person leading the quiz was having some difficulty being heard & asking the questions. It then became apparent as to why this was.
Unknown to the vast majority of the people present, the poor man was in the process of suffering a mild stroke! Thankfully, his wife & daughter were there with him & started to realise what was happening.
An ambulance was called & he was treated by the paramedics, before being taken off to hospital.

Thankfully, it appears that he was not to badly affected by this stroke & was even able to apologise on his way out (Why do people always feel the need to apologise, even when they have no need to do so?)

In the UK in recent months, we have had a Government tv & poster campaign showing people how to recognise the early warning signs that somebody is suffering a stroke. Even if that person is yourself.
After all, as the campaign states, every second can count in a situation like this. The quicker that the stroke symptoms are recognised, the quicker that that person can be treated & possibly saved.

The campaign uses the acronym F.A.S.T. Which means:
F - Face
A - Arms
S - Speech
T - Time

One of the things that struck me about this whole episode, was that as soon as the people on our table were aware of what had actually happened, we all started talking about the F.A.S.T campaign.
So, regardless of what some people might think about these Goverment campaigns. They do work.
People become aware & digest the campaign messages without really realising it.
That might sound a little scary & i can see why. But, in this instance, i'm willing to go along with it.
If a Government campaign helps to save just one life. It's been well worth it, in my opinion.

Anyway, to get back to the reason for the title of this blog......

As you can imagine, this incident left us all in a bit of a quandary. We were now left with no quizmaster & also without most of the people who were running the quiz. Which also involved the provision of a mid quiz meal.

Thankfully, the quizmaster had left all of his questions & answers behind.
At first, the one remaining lady tried to run the quiz herself. But, it was soon obvious to us all, that she couldn't be expected to do everything herself.
So, i volunteered my services & ended up being the quizmaster for the rest of the evening. Something that i've never done before. And to be quite honest, i thoroughly enjoyed myself.

The rest of the evening went very well, even though i say so myself. The lady was then able to arrange the food & the raffle, whilst i went into "arranging" mode & ran the rest of the quiz.
Although, i have no problem with doing this sort of thing, the hardest part for me was trying to get my head around the questions. Some of which were a little obscure & also trying to put my own personality into the way i asked the questions themselves.
I always find it easier to say things my way & never find it that easy to read out others words. That is especially true when it comes to questions. We all tend to ask questions in our own style. Whether we realise that, or not.

For me, this is yet another example of my experience with vlogging helping me in new situations & giving me the confidence to take on those new situations. Something i may well not have done, in my pre-vlogging days.

So, how did my team do in the quiz? Well, they came last!
I like to think that this is because i wasn't there to help them. But, who knows?
All i know is that i had a good evening. Even though it wasn't quite the evening that i'd anticipated.
We all helped raise some much needed money for a very worthy local charity & i've now added the skill of quizmaster to my ever growing CV (Or, resume, for all you Americans out there)

I just hope that the next quiz night i attend, isn't quite so eventful.