Last week, whilst watching University Challenge – a regular event in our house – I was once again frustrated by the geography questions.  I have never heard of most of the obscure places that crop up in this quiz and it made me think about how on earth anyone would know the answers to these questions…..

When I did geography at school, it was incredibly boring.  Nothing to do with different countries, just boring, boring lessons on crop rotation.  Admittedly I stopped doing geography in the third year, when we got to choose our options, so I didn’t do it for that long. Actually, thinking back, I didn’t get an option, I was thrown out of the class for being disruptive (difficult to believe, I know).  Maybe if I had seen it through to the end I would have learned more about different places instead of how to irrigate a field (a piece of information I have never found I needed).

Anyway, I still don’t know how people come to know all this.   Those students on Uni Challenge can’t all have taken geography at A level – I mean, who would want to take geography at any level anyway, it’s so boring? – but, somehow, they know these random things about random places.   KD didn’t do geography A level and HE knows.  So why don’t I?

I am considering investing in a globe of the world that I can have by me at all times so that, in a moment of boredom, I can discover some new place I have never heard of.

Then again I could just accept that geography is not my strong point and take up something far more useful, like knitting.