New Shoes

I've got my new shoes on, and suddenly everything is not right.

In May I bought myself a pair of shiny green Vegan Doc Martens, which I'd been coveting for a long while. They were on offer, and too beautiful to turn down at such a price. Size eleven, the same as all the other shoes I've worn since I was about sixteen, but they dwarfed my feet. No matter, I ordered some insoles made of cork - happy days? Wrong again.

The insoles arrived too late for me to wear them to the festival at which I'd been planning on debuting them, but it turned out that it would have been disastrous had they got here on time.

Even with the insoles they persisted in giving me blisters, but I've persisted in trying to break them in, with ever increasing combinations of sock thicknesses. However, just as it felt like I was solving the heel issue, another, more insidious problem reared its head. They were absolutely destroying my knees.

From the age of ten, when I suffered a Big Twist in a football game, my knees have been wont to pop in and out of place occasionally. So I'm pretty used to pain in that area, but usually there's a clear cause. After a day in the Docs last month, I found my left knee in agony for no discernible reason. After a day in the Docs on Saturday I felt the same thing and the penny dropped.

It truly is that which you love the most that hurts you the most.

With that in mind I'll be watching UC very warily this evening, hands wrapped protectively around my dodgy knees.

Christ Church were series champions in 2008, while Southampton's best run came last year when they reached the semis (not the final, as I erroneously tweeted earlier). The year that CC beat Sheffield in the final, the losing semi-finalists were Manchester and Magdalen, the two winningest sides in the history of the show, but they've had enough success, so it was good to mix things up a bit.

Wickremasinghe buzzes in wrongly on the first starter, losing five points and allowing her opposite number Wotton in to steal the points. Meredith hits back for Southampton with Big O notation, which sounds far more cool and far less complicated than it actually is. They tied the game with two bonuses on Middlemarch, singing aloud How Soon is Now to work out that it was the Smiths song which opens with the line 'I am the son and heir of nothing in particular'. Speaking of things which sound far more cool than they are, I wonder if George Eliot would have liked Morrissey.

Making up for her earlier mistake, Wickremasinghe takes the lead for Southampton with Femme Fatale and they claimed a full set on the John Maddox Prize.

The first picture starter is on the present perfect tense, something which I haven't had much experience in. I don't really know any of the tenses. I lived a life where I haven't had to know that vivia is in the imperfect tense. I was born in 1995 so have had no need to use the past historic, and I will not need to know about the future tense at any point either.

Another for the Southampton skipper gave them a thirty point lead before a pair from Wotton flipped the script. It was a battle of the two captains at this point, as Wickremasinghe was quickest to recognise Jimi Hendrix on the music starter. Rowe hit back for CC, and they struggled desperately with a bonus set on Japanese cinema, before Wotton went on an absolute tear with four of the next six starters to blow the game apart.

Sixty points separated the two sides with only a few minutes remaining, but Southampton did their utmost to make it a thrilling conclusion. Meredith and then Wickremasinghe claimed starters, and they raced through bonuses, both correctly and incorrectly, as though their lives depended on it. With seconds left they had closed the gap to fifteen, but who was there to spoil the party?

You guessed it. Greenwashing, Wotton's ninth starter of the evening, sealed the win for Christ Church.

Christ Church 180 - 155 Southampton

In previous years this may have been a high enough score for Southampton to make the play-offs, but after four episodes they are already ranked third, so their chances are very slim.

Christ Church have the strongest buzzer of the series so far in Wotton, but will he be able to keep it up against stern opposition in the second round?

Join me again next week for an Oxbridge derby as Emmanuel, Cam take on Jesus, Ox. If you aren't already, please consider subscribing by clicking somewhere in the vicinity of these words.