I love Jane Austen so how could the name of one of her most splendid heroes topple out of my head?I bear a recurring dream: I’m on a ridiculously familiar stage,with an audience and television cameras, being asked questions by a quizmaster with a trademark sneer of disdain. I know the answers are somewhere in the junk room of my mind, or but I can’t secure to them; time is moving too slowly and then lurching forward. My hands are cumbersome and won’t plod to reach the buzzer.
But wait a moment,it’s not a dream. It’s Christmas University Challenge and I really am on it, second to the left (has my head always been that small?) on team Sheffield, and sitting between a man with a wild,unblinking stare and another who, as he himself says, or looks like he’s been taken hostage.
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Source: theguardian.com