Last Wednesday – the Boogaloo Movie Quiz. My previous attempt at hosting any kind of a gathering was my birthday party in Ipswich 1990. About 3 of the 30 people I invited turned up. In the end the four of us just sat around morosely and watched Vic Reeves's Big Night Out like the good college students we were. I've never hosted a party since, birthday or not. Like Miss Havisham at the altar, I can take a hint. Unlike her, I hasten to add, no vengeful feelings upon malekind were harboured. Even back then I'd learned to resist that particular daily temptation.

So for this film quiz fourteen years later I ask nine people to come, being a selection of film fans, London social butterflies, or both. This way, even if the 1990 party trauma repeats itself, I reason, I'll still be left with a respectable team size. I also impose a slight dress code: dress stylishly, make an effort, and on no account wear trainers. We may not win the quiz, but at least we could win in the Most Stylish Team In The Room stakes. To make our mark further, I bring a vase of fresh white lilies. As Mr Wilde says:

<i>"White lilies, in whose cups the gold bees dream,
The fallen snow of petals where the breeze
Scatters the chestnut blossom, or the gleam
Of boyish limbs in water, – are not these
Enough for thee, dost thou desire more?</i>

In fact, all nine team members turn up, plus Ms Ruta brings Mr Atomic:

<img src="http://www.biggerboat-filmquiz.co.uk/images/SEPTquizPic12.jpg"></img>

[photo by Mr Hupfield, from the <a href="http://www.biggerboat-filmquiz.co.uk/" target="_blank">quiz website</a>]

Clockwise from front: Mr Atomic, Ms Ruta, Ms Andrei, Ms Mann, Mr White, Mr Kennedy, Ms Welch, Mr Edwards, Ms Frost, Ms Madison.

It's just as well the organizers aren't strict on team size. I feel a bit guilty that we are occupying seats while some teams are forced to stand. Still, I am the quiz guest of honour, invited by the organizers to form my own team and see what I make of their event. They have no need to publicise the quiz among my readers – it couldn't be more packed – but they do want to read my take on it.

Although I'm a regular at the pub – indeed, I'm the place's official First Ambassador – I've not attended the movie quiz till now. This is partly because I've not been invited to join anyone's team, but mainly because the films featured tend to be popcorn blockbusters with lots of guns and explosions, which aren't really my cup of tea. I do not know the locations of Executive Decision or Sudden Impact 2, nor can I recognise the theme tune to Mortal Kombat.

As it turns out, the quiz is vastly enjoyably even if one's knowledge proves wanting. A general sense of fun prevails, with the tying winners decided by a game of Scissors Paper Rock. The two organizers, Mr Hupfield and Mr Williams, let their personalities fall into an agreeably entertaining yin-yang double-act – the grumpy one and the cheery one. Though both are equally charming and kind, even sending a drink to my table. I am quite touched.

Another tension-disarming element of the quiz is having all the questions subtitled upon a large screen especially provided for the occasion. Keeping a packed pub absolutely silent while questions are read out can induce a certain stress, and might even suggest a pub quiz is meant to be taken terribly seriously. The use of subtitles loosens up this element considerably, so the air of playful nonchalance remains unfettered.

The screen is also used for rounds featuring movie posters and trailers, and for celebrity questions. On this occasion, we have a bemused and be-jet-lagged Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughan obligingly addressing the Boogaloo, presumably filmed by a film journo friend while the actors were doing the London press for that new film they're in, whatever it is.

As you've probably gathered, Dear Reader, I turn out to be not much of a team player. More a sedentary cheerleader, content to provide moral support. Although I do know a few answers, not least which musician appears in O Lucky Man, I don't think I provide anything exclusively. For instance, Mr White not only knows about O Lucky Man but can recognise the poster for "BASEketball", my ignorance of which is unlikely to trouble me between here and the grave. With his suit and scarlet cuff links, Mr White personifies the melding of gentleman style with impressive movie trivia content. Mr Kennedy bought new shoes especially for the occasion. The others are elegantly turned out in black dresses, or in Ms Ruta and Mr Atomic's case, their usual takes on self-fashioned anti-fashion.

Our team includes a lecturer in film studies, a worker in the best video shop in North London, and a DVD reviewer for a glossy magazine. Despite this and our outrageous team size, we come joint seventh. But that matters little – I enjoy myself immensely and book a table at the next quiz in October.

As far as I'm concerned, it's not the winning that counts. It's the taking flowers.

Today is my 33rd birthday. I share it with Charlie Sheen, Princess Michael of Kent, and the outbreak of World War Two.

Tonight I shall be celebrating or commiserating this tragedy at <a href="http://www.howdoesitfeel.f9.co.uk/club.html" target="_blank">How Does It Feel To Be Loved</a>, the Brixton version. All are welcome to join me.

Between now and then… what? Seems a vaguely pleasant day. I may go for a long, long walk and consider things.

This time last year I went to Crystal Palace Park to look at the newly-restored <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/yourlondon/crystal_palace/virtual_tours.shtml" target="_blank">Victorian Dinosaur park</a>. It was something I'd been meaning to do since childhood, when I'd been excited by photos of the stone beasts in books. I finally got around to meeting them last year, though they seemed not as large or as impressive as the images I'd carried around in my head for decades. The restoration made them look too clean, too new. The rest of Crystal Palace Park is a museum in absentia with only two Sphinxs, the staircase and a solitary statue surviving from the original Palace.

Visiting this place alone on one's birthday turned one's mind to gloomy metaphors. Adulthood as a desolate park, slightly out of the way of where Life really goes on, consisting of a handful of relics from the past, the spaces where the past used to be, and nothing else. The mossy, unrestored remnants are intact but forlorn, and suggest failure. The newly painted, rejuvenated artifacts should suggest coping with the present, but in fact engender desperation and disappointment. Adulthood forever failing to live up to the publicity.

Yet, thinking further, the dinosaurs can become joyous and idiosyncratic tributes to the past. They are steeped in factual inaccuracy. But they're stylish mistakes, entertaining mistakes, personal mistakes, original mistakes, created as they were by the man who invented the very word "dinosaur".

Unlikely, incongruous, improbable, ridiculous, pointless, useless, possibly disappointing in the flesh, but ultimately I'm glad they exist.

This, then, is the way you find me thinking about my life this morning.

I'm often told I should just "grow up". I regard this as the equivalent of receiving a postcard from Hell, saying "Having A Horrible Time. Wish You Were Here."

It's just as well I find being gloomy and alone enormously enjoyable. Yet I also love chatting and dancing in clubs and bars with friendly company. I am a sociable recluse. One should always be able to have one's Victorian Dinosaur cake and eat it.