Coffee on the Crescent have teamed up with our local council Headingley & Hyde Park News, the University of Leeds Sustainability team to to support our great friends at Rainbow Junktion. They provide food and essentials for those who are finding it particularly tough at the moment. Throughout December if you are heading to the supermarket and are able to purchase one extra item please do. Bring it here and we’ll ensure it gets to those who need it the most.  (They are on Woodhouse Lane, 2 The Crescent, LS6 2NW, opposite Woodhouse Moor near Hyde Park Corner).

We’ve left space under the tree so we can fill it with the gifts that really will make a difference. Pictured here are the things most in need but we can accept anything as long as it’s in date and unopened. Every Little helps. This year more than ever. Thankyou:)

I like quizzes, especially during lockdowns, which is a word I didn’t expect to see pluralised because I was given to understand that The Lockdown would be a one-off way a way to banish Covid-19, just The War was a one-off way to banish Nazis.

Still, if we have to live through recurrent periods of social isolation and taking up unviable hobbies, TV quizzes may be a way forward. They are little more than a pleasurable way of wasting time but can be plausibly disguised as challenging intellectual exercises essential to our mental health.

This works better in quizzes which have brainy contestants, such as Mastermind or University Challenge, because, even if you are only able to answer a couple of questions, you have a chance of outwitting the combined forces of Brasenose College, Oxford, or the sort of Mastermind contestant who, despite knowing almost everything, has never heard of Ed Sheeran.

Lynne and I have taken to watching, as a diversion from the  lockdown wilderness, the early evening BBC1 show Pointless, in which couples of all sorts (mainly spouses, friends, colleagues and relatives) compete for a basic prize of £1,000, which wouldn’t be life-changing for most of them because they tend to be comfortably retired or working in jobs with titles I don’t understand but sound very important, which is one of my unfulfilled career ambitions.

This makes them very gracious losers, just like departing President Trump isn’t, and the mood of the show is as amiable as our other favourite teatime viewing, Richard Osman’s House of Games  (BBC2).

Osman, who also co-hosts Pointless, looks like someone who enjoys quizzing not for the fame or money but for its own sake, which is a very important, although far from universal, quality in quizmasters – Jeremy Paxman, for example, has yet to master it, despite doing it for so long that his hair has turned white and he has to wear glasses all the time, which I’ve only recently noticed because, before lockdown, I didn’t arrange my life around watching TV game shows.

Now Mondays finds me in a kind of voluntary lockdown because, after watching the two Osman shows, we have a short break to sharpen our wits (usually wasted because our toolbox doesn’t contain a wit-sharpener or, if it does, we’ve no idea what it looks like) and then we watch, in turn, Mastermind, Only Connect and University Challenge.

Only Connect (BBC2), which is one of our lockdown revelations, isn’t really a quiz show; it deals more in puzzles which only people with good general knowledge can solve. The contestants remind me somehow of the contestants on the Robert Robinson  BBC show Ask The Family, which ran – later under Alan Titchmarsh – from 1967 to 2005.

Both shows have a kinship because they involve quick thinking and high intelligence and produce a similar look among the participants; a disregard for the glamour of being on telly, and an impression that they are less concerned with getting their hair of clothes right than with the sheer joy of quizzing, which is as it should be.

Yesterday’s Monday Mind Workout was based on 60s music – see the answers below:

1.True or false: Penny Lane is named after a real street in London – False, it’s street is in Liverpool
2. Who is the lead singer of The Who? Roger Doltrey
3.It’s Now or Never was the first 60s number one for which musical icon? Elvis Presley
4.Who sang the title track of 60s Bond film Thunderball? Tom Jones
5.Which Daydream Believer band initially began as a fictional band on a sitcom? The Monkees

6.Peter, Paul and Mary famously sang Leaving on a Jet Plane – but who wrote and sang the original version? John Denver
7.What is the best selling single of the 1960s in the UK? She Loves you by the Beatles
8.Which UK comedian had the best-selling UK single of 1965? Ken Dodd with Tears
9.The Animals formed in which UK city? Newcastle
10.What was the name of Tom Jones’ first number one in 1965, later popularised by Carlton in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? It’s Not unusual
11.Which iconic BBC music show premiered on 1st January 1964? Top of the Pops
12. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini was a 1990 hit for Bombalurina, but who sang the 1960 original? Brian Hyland
13. Which band were recording their first album at Abbey Road while The Beatles were recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band? Pink Floyd
14. How many number one albums did Cilla Black have in the 60s? None, her first number one album was in 2015
15.Which American rocker was the final performer at Woodstock festival in 1969? Jimi Hendrix
16.Jim Morrison was the lead singer of which controversial band? The Doors
17.Name the song: “All the leaves are brown, And the sky is grey…” California Dreamin by The Mamas and The Papas

18.How many number ones did The Beatles have during the 1960s in the UK? 17

19.Gimme Shelter and Paint It Black were hits for which legendary British band? The Rolling Stones

20.Which blonde bombshell became the face of country music in the 60s? Dolly Parton

Back in the days of three penny bits,
when schools employed nurses to search for your nits.
When snowballs were harmless; ice slides were permitted
and all of your jumpers were warm and hand knitted.

Back in the days of hot ginger beers,
when children remained so for more than six years.
When children respected what older folks said,
and pot was a thing you kept under your bed.

Back in the days of Listen with Mother,
when neighbours were friendly and talked to each other.
When cars were so rare you could play in the street.
When Doctors made house calls and Police walked the beat.

Back in the days of Milligan’s Goons,
when butter was butter and songs all had tunes.
It was dumplings for dinner and trifle for tea,
and your annual break was a day by the sea.

Back in the days of Dixon’s Dock Green,
Crackerjack pens and Lyons ice cream.
When children could freely wear National Health glasses,
and teachers all stood at the FRONT of their classes.

Back in the days of rocking and reeling,
when mobiles were things that you hung from the ceiling. When woodwork and pottery got taught in schools,
and everyone dreamed of a win on the pools.

Back in the days when I was a lad,
I can’t help but smile for the fun that I had.
Hopscotch and roller skates; snowballs to lob.
Back in the days of tanners and bobs.

Credit: from the book, Back in the Days of Tanners and Bobs by A B Wyze