There Is A Light (And Its Behind The Fridge)

During lockdown we got a new fridge in my house. Its so long ago that I don't remember what the old one was like, but it must have been troublesome, and I do remember that we all liked the new one a lot better. It has a water dispenser, but we've never used it.

The delivery driver had to bring it round the back because it didn't fit in the front, and then we had to haul it through the kitchen because they weren't allowed in the house. At least that's how I remember it, though maybe I've added a bit of manual labour from myself to make it seem like I'm strong.

Another thing about the new fridge is that it is gigantic - a true behemoth (not quite American (because they have massive fridges), but about twice the size of any fridge I've had since I went to uni), and when placed it in the same location as the old one it obscured the light switch. For a while we felt like this might be a problem, but soon enough we all developed the muscle memory of the specific twist you need to do to reach it. It became one of the quirks of the house, like the downstairs bathroom which used to be covered in coca-cola adverts (if you want to read more about this then subscribe the my Patreon, because I am going to write about it at some point over there).

All well and good, until a new person moves in.

When I was putting the finishing touches on my overnight oats yesterday, my new housemate appeared and asked me if the kitchen had a light switch. She knew that it had a working light, because she'd seen it on, but hadn't been able to find it herself.

Ah, yes. Its behind the fridge, of course (I didn't say the of course)

Sometimes things can seem so obvious and intuitive to you that it doesn't occur to you that other people might not know them. Even the simplest of tasks can be difficult if no one has shown you how to do them. Even the simplest of questions is only easy if you know the answer.

And so to some difficult questions which I definitely won't know the answer to as UCL took on Hertford College, Oxford.

Hertford had dispatched the Open University 230-155 in the first round, while UCL had beaten King's, Cambridge 190-145. Open have already reached the quarter-finals themselves, having come back through the repechage, so having beaten such an impressive team, Hertford came into this as favourites.

My girlfriend said that last week's match report section was better than usual, but I don't know what I did differently, so I'm just going to do it as normal and hope that I have acquired a more engaging style and suddenly gained the ability to use it. Like how the 'wax on, wax off' training regime in Karate Kid meant that the Karate Kid could suddenly do karate one day.

Here's your first starter for ten; if you want to watch the episode before reading the rest of this post you can do so here.

Whittle opens the scoring for Hertford with Sappho, though I would have preferred it if he saved his first points for a time when Hertford were losing by a significant margin, because then I could have said he was whittling away at the lead. Alas, things don't always line up how you want them.

A neg from UCL allowed Keskin to swoop in and extend Hertford's lead, but UCL weren't below zero for long, with Izzatdust claiming their first points courtesy of Marlborough. He and Hall cannot contain their excitement at a set of bonuses on chess, and start clamouring to be the one who Sawh takes her answers from.

Keskin takes another, before a guess of 1812 (as in the war of) gives Izzatdust a second of his own. An unfortunate neg from Sawh of 'executive function' (the correct answer being 'executive disfunction') gave Hertford the chance to capitalise, but they couldn't take it, and Izzatdust continued his excellent start with Neruda on the next starter.

Bose-Einstein condensate gives Hall his first starter, but he can't remember the capital city of Somaliland on the bonuses (he guesses Bergeisa, but its Hargeisa). He'd looked at this on a map a few days earlier and thought 'I should probably remember this', but wasn't able to.

Another slip up, this time from Keskin (giving Slovakia instead of Slovenia) gave Hall ten more points. He is then incredibly convinced that the answer to the second bonus is 'total internal refraction' rather than 'reflection', but concedes to his teammates, who were right.

Hertford trailed by 65 points, but they Sourbutted away at this with the music starter. This was Whittled away even further with cosmopolitan on the next starter. They had the chance to wipe the deficit out entirely when Hall negged the next starter, but Balakrishnan Raju couldn't pick it up (with Rajan baffled that none of them had recognised his description of calypso music, exclaiming 'what are you guys listening to for a living').

Another starter from Izzatdust put a stop to the Whittling, and Hall was once again very sure of his answer on the bonuses, but abashed by his incorrectness on the previous one, didn't push too hard. This time he should have, as his neoliberalism would have beaten Izzatdust's libertarianism.

With UCL cruising, Finlay decides he wants in on the act, and takes his first starter with Emma Lazarus. They are 70 points clear with only a few minutes remaining.

Keskin takes his fourth for Hertford, but its too little too late, and Finlay grabs another with Finland, before Sawh ends the game on a high for UCL with MET.

Hertford 140 - 225 UCL

Somehow became a decently high scoring match with a lot of questions answered at the end. Hertford looked the stronger coming into it, but were outmuscled on the buzzer by Izzatdust and his UCL team.

Next week its Manchester vs Edinburgh (my current city vs my alma mater), a match I'm greatly looking forward to - see you then.

In the meantime if you want to make sure you see every one of these posts, subscribe here so you don't miss them if Twitter implodes or something