Play fighting

I am a little bit competitive. I mentioned this to my friend Teresa in the pub the other day.

She genuinely seemed a bit surprised. "You? Competitive? You hate anything like that. You refuse to play any sport at all. Because you're rubbish at it. You're not competitive."

"I'm only competitive at the things I'm good at," I said.

"Oh yes," said Teresa. "It's coming back to me now. You're still really angry about that time I could name more Shakespeare plays than you."

"What?" I said, somewhat brusquely. "Firstly I have absolutely no recollection of having a Shakespeare-play naming competition with you. And secondly, I totally would have won."

"No, no," insisted Teresa. "I won. You and I had a competition to see how many Shakespeare plays we could name. And I won."

"Was it all a wonderful dream, Teresa?" I asked.

"No!" insited Wrong Teresa. "Well," she conceded, "it might have been Jane Austen novels."

"And I would have beaten you at that too," said I.

Simon - refereeing - called for a re-match. Which is how, Ploggers, I spent my Wednesday evening in a trendy Shoreditch pub making a list of Shakespeare plays on the back of a "platters to share" menu.

To Teresa The Wrong's credit, she did name 14 plays, and had a couple which I'd missed off. I, however, named 21 plays. And I am NOT a bad winner. Because I didn't take a point off for her not-entirely-accurate Three Gentlemen of Verona.

"Jane Austen novels... GO!" may or may not have been my first reply on learning of my sweet, sweet victory. Funnily enough, the evening came to an end quite quickly after that. I guess everyone was exhausted from the exciting spectacle.