Six of us are sitting round a table at an annual charity quiz. This local charity is an admirable one and, obviously we all applaud the good work it does but, once we’ve got the raffle tickets over with, things start to shake down a bit.

There are, of course, plenty of teams crammed full of mature, well-rounded individuals just out for an evening of philanthropy and fun. And then there are teams like ours.

We know we can’t win. The winners’ cup will inevitably go to a team of middle-aged blokes in T-shirts who, if they don’t frequent the pub-quiz circuit, ought to seriously consider doing so. They are leagues ahead of us and imagining we could get within ten points of them would be like going head-to-head with Zara Phillips, armed only with a donkey.

No, we know our limits. Up to a point. But we’ve all gone in there determined to come away with a place in the top three.

The evening hasn’t started that well in that my husband, an honorary member of our works team, describes a train that is due to arrive at the station at ten past six as the “5.20 train”, because that’s the time he got on it.

So a farcical situation arises where I’m at the station to pick him far too early, then far too late, so dinner burns and we both arrive at the quiz destination by taxi just two minutes before it is due to start, with indigestion, a frosty silence between us and a good 20 minutes lost on the marathon paper which he’s normally quite good at.

The rest of the team have managed to organise their lives to arrive punctually, order drinks and crack on with the marathon, though, so when the quiz master warns Round One is imminent we’ve recovered our aplomb, if not our sense of humour.

The women on the team have a quick pow-wow and tell the men that our jokers are on the literature and foods of the world rounds. The men roll their eyes but can’t contest it because (a) they can’t offer an alternative – the round on divas doesn’t look too easy – and (b) we’re shushing them as it’s all about to kick off.

You can almost smell the adrenaline rising from our table. Other teams are allowing members to go and get drinks, have an occasional chat, or even call the answers out loud, but not us.

There are notes flying from one to the other scrawled with short messages such as Bombay Duck! Ron Davies! The police station! They haven’t started building the police station yet! Not that one – the one at Westlea! And occasionally there’s a low snarl or hiss – don’t try to answer questions that you know nothing about.

We try to keep track of our scores as we go along, but we’re at the back of the room and don’t own a decent set of eyes or spectacles between us.

The joker rounds come and go and we’re pretty pleased with our performance – though miffed we just wrote ‘Kebab’, rather than ‘Doner kebab’, which will have cost us two marks, and let me give you a handy tip: D H Lawrence was born at 8a Victoria Street, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, should anyone ever ask you. Nottinghamshire is not enough. That’s another two points gone, we say as one, heads in our hands, as the quizmaster reads out the answers to that round.

Oddly enough, as the final results are read out in reverse order, many teams are chatting and enjoying themselves, while we are poised like meerkats, trying to catch the scores.

And, yes! We’re third! Suddenly we’re heading for the stage, and are festooned with medals and a trophy and someone taking a picture and shaking our hands! Yes, yes, yes!

On the way home, we take the rounds apart and agree that with a bit more thought and time and a little less beer we could probably have picked up the extra 11 points to reach second place. But no matter – we’ve come away with prizes and there’s always next year.

I’ve heard 2012 is going to be quite big.