Sprawled in front of the telly on Saturday night, probably like most of us in lockdown.
Startled when my mobile rings and on comes one of my quine’s besties. The girls and their families were doing a virtual Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
Sez she: “We’re stuck with a question. We’ve done 50/50, now we’re phoning you as a friend.” Ken ‘is, I was high as a kite. It’s the most excitement I’ve had in three months. It could have been Jazzer Clarkson himsellie on the other end of the phone. Go Mo! I wiz like jelly.
Here’s her: “Which of these two countries was not a founder member of the European Union? West Berlin or the United Kingdom?” Yess! I kinnt it. Long gone memories of General De Gaulle insisting: “Non!” A referendum even.
Sez me: “The UK.”
She comes back: “How sure are you, Moreen?” The cheek of it. I’ve known her since she was four. So I spat it oot: “One hundred percent.”
That’s the secret of the game. If you know it, you know it. Turns oot, I won them the £500,000. And they went on to clinch the million. Not seen a penny of it yet…
Virtual quizzes have become the thing to do in our house-bound lockdown lives. And aren’t they brilliant? Like having a Christmas or birthday family get-together every week. Mind you, just getting me “into” the Zoom meeting is a major brain-freezer in itself. You’d think it would be like one of those practice-makes-perfect routines. Every week, I’d get better at Zooming. Dream on.
More than eight weeks in, the grandToots actually cheer when my phizog finally appears on screen and somebody declares: “Give her a point for getting in.” Sarcastic sod.
Because I haven’t the scoobiest how to set up the Who Wants..? game from my end, I have to go on the net for my weekly 20 adults’ and 20 children’s questions and answers. But now, after so long of Googling, I’m running out of new questions, various bods now regularly narking: “You asked the same question last week. And two weeks ago. Now the only one who doesn’t know a baby kangaroo is a joey is you.”
Meanwhile, on the actual Millionaire telly game, my kids always take the proverbial out of me because I start so confident that I’ll make it all the way. Then, to my pride-beaten shame, I’m struggling even with the early questions. Last week they started giving me a free pass just to get me beyond a measly £1,000.
Now there’s news WWTBAM? is coming back very soon. Because of lockdown, there will be no audience, so no option to ask it. However, there might now be not one but two chances to phone a friend. If I knew someone who could conquer the Fastest Finger First challenge, please let me be your “she’ll know it” friend.
A bulldozer too far once again? Aye
The spik o’ the place this week is Aberdeen Market going into administration.
The poor traders left to decide where their next move, if any, is going to be. Buiding owners Patrizia look like they’ll push ahead with their council-approved plans to demolish the place and redevelop into “office, retail and leisure space”. Thanks be! Soo desperate for new offices.
It’s sad, baffling and plain daft we’ve got to this sorry pass. Wrinklies like me remember the golden days of the New Market in the ’50s and ’60s. Aberdeen was the only city in the UK with two covered shopping areas – decades before malls were invented – the Co-opie arcade in Loch Street and the market between Union and Hadden streets. Such beautiful, exciting places to shop with their glass domes and what I used to call pavements in the sky (the upper walkways).
Bustling with every kind of trader, the market was particularly famed for its sweetie and toffee stalls. Remember the heavenly aroma of cow candy the moment you stepped, clutching mum’s hand, inside?
However, Aberdeen’s city fathers and mothers through the decades have been blind followers of stripping out the old to make way for the glassy, granite new.
There was no one – councillor nor official – to stand up and say: “This is a bullodozer too far.”
Nae big regrets… it’s all good television
I canna stick Rylan Clark. And I struggle with Davina McCall. But when I spotted E4’s Best Big Brothers Ever series, I was hooked.
That’s because, for all those long, hot summers, I was glued to my set watching folk I either liked or loathed cooking their meals when I should have been cooking mine. A slave to the series.
My pals were appalled. How could I lower myself?
However, now looking back on them, I’m fair chuffed.
Most of them were superb TV.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.