Wednesday saw me doing the bingo or rather bingo nearly doing me. Again. The simplest of tasks and the most placid of games seems to turn the most sweet and gentle old lady into a Tasmanian Devil. It started off badly when Jimmy, the head bingo bobby, decided not to come out to play. Last week he got rushed into hospital after sorting out the bingo session with a suspected swinging brick attack. I would have said heart but Jimmy hasn’t got one. This is the Jimmy who lives in a bungalow at the back of me and often shouts abuse over the garden fence. Friendly banter you must understand. The Jimmy who stood in his garden looking up at my sick room window and on seeing Irene there started stick two fingers of each hand gesticulating wildly, in a salute of admiration. The very same Jimmy who the nurse who was dressing my derriere also looked out of the window at asked Irene why the little man in the garden opposite was obscenely waving his arms wildly in the direction our house.
Anyway, I digress. Jimmy got the string tensioned on his swinging brick and he now seems OK but the doctor has told him to have a month off. He said he is coming back but I have said no way. If he thinks I am giving him the kiss of life he’s got another think coming. So Jimmy wasn’t here to sell bingo and I stepped in, the brave, foolhardy soul that I am. Bingo players have a language of their own. “Two sixes” means twelve tickets except when it means twenty four. “Six” also means two threes or twelve tickets. You have to guess. Of course Jimmy knows what they mean. But I don’t. After Coronation Street chucks out there is a steady stream of desperate bingo players all trying to get their “lucky” tickets together. So alternating between 1X6=6 and 1X6=12, and 2X6=12 or 2X6=24, I managed to complete the task without having a nervous breakdown with the help of Jimmy’s number two, a fiery big blonde with surgically enhanced breasts.
We counted the money and scenes beyond compare, the money tallied with the number of tickets sold. Let there be jubilation, dancing in the streets and I might even declare a national holiday. Jimmy normally picks up the first half payout but I had to take it downstairs to the payer outerer who was stood in the front of the hall doing what most women do best, talking. I stood for a lifetime – well maybe thirty seconds but it feels like a lifetime. These bingoteers do not take prisoners and I like to get away as soon as I can. Finally she turned round and sauntered down the hall to take the payout from me. The caller announced on her megaphone (not that she needs one) that the first game is about to begin. “Hold on” shouts the payer outerer, “I’ve only just got the money.” Making out that she was late because I was late. “If you stopped gabbing and paid attention you would have had the money earlier” I tell her and try to make good my escape while the bingo caller asks sarcastically if “we can start now?”
I just get to the door when I am summoned by the bingo caller who asks who is going to do “open the box” Open the bloody box! I would like to put her in one. “You” I answer sweetly to the woman with the worst Brummie accent in the world who makes my life a misery every week when she comes up after I have spent about an hour setting the computer and projector up and fine tuning the PA system, two minutes before the first game is due to start and says “T’aint werkin’ agene.”
“ Me? I will if you ask me nicely.” I say “Why? Don’t you know how to do it?” “Yes I do but it’s Jimmy’s job.” I am already beating a hasty retreat before she gets the chance to hear me pleading with her to do the open the box, probably with my hands around her throat.
Up in the office and I do a few calculations and work out what I am going to pay in the two flier games. We divide the money – open the box prize and kitty and welfare cut, second half flyer line and house, five games line and house and £325 to go back to the bar for the float. Money duly sorted and put away, George says that he will take the second half payout down. When he comes back he says that I set him up because when he took the money to the payer outerer she said that she wasn’t going to do it any more after being spoken to “like that,”
Well, got away lightly this week. Eh? Except the jackpot went of nearly £700.
I remember one time I called the bingo on a Wedneday – twelve games and it is mind numbing. Did I press the button for the next number, or didn’t I? One thing for sure, they soon let you know if you do it wrong. Mistake number one, I sat down with my flies undone. A big bonny Geordie lass shouts out “Drew, man, do you flies up.” The hall erupts in laughter and my already red face deepens a couple of shades. Then I call the first game. That went well. Then started the second game. I can hear a lot of mumbling but don’t know what is being said. Finally, Joe Tate, who is now deceased, bless him, stands up and shouts at the top of his voice “Drew, man. For fucks sake slow doon.”
Slow down I did. In fact the next game was too slow. Next time I’ll get a bloody metronome.
So now, dear reader, you can see that my life is not all beer, bingo and skittles. I still suffer from stress related bingo disorder and the flashbacks are horrendous.
Today, we had a dress rehearsal for our collection around Cotgrave tomorrow. We set the PA, speakers on the roof of the car along with union jacks and Help the Heroes banners ready for a little jaunt around Cotgrave tomorrow. Nothing can go wrong with that. Can it?
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