British Butterfies

Setting the questions for a recent pub quiz at The Willoughby allowed me the indulgence to revisit my childhood when, for a few years, I was an enthusiastic collector of picture cards given away with packets of Brooke Bond PG Tips tea.

I vividly recall the excitement of opening a new packet of tea to see what the card was and of taking swaps down to the local supermarket to exchange for gaps.

I collected a few books but the most complete collection, and the one that I remember the best, is British Butterflies.

It seemed to be the idea book to use this for the picture round.

There are 50 butterflies in this collection from 1963 and at that time I also collected live butterflies (I'm not very proud of that now) so the pictures were very real to me.

I selected this eighteen for the quiz.

It was, I thought, a clever combination of the dead easy, e.g. Red Admiral, and the rather difficult, e.g. which Fritillary is that?

In the actual quiz the teams that seemed to know a lot about everything  revealed that they know absolutely nothing about British butterflies.

I think that the top score was 4/18, and that was thanks to the new Polish barmaid recognising the Peacock.

As luck would have it, another regular came in half way through the quiz, too late to take part, and not only made it obvious that he knew all the butterflies but he started describing their caterpillars too!

As a round in a pub quiz it proved to be something of a failure but as a reminder of part of my childhood it was a great success.

I am now looking at Brooke Bond tea cards on eBay!