Voy Por Ustedes

I fancied myself a game of cards yesterday, but procrastinate I did, and by the time I was motivated enough to put on some coordinated evening wear on, it was too late to head north for Dusk Till Dawn £50 freeze-out, so I headed west to the Broadway Casino for the £30 double-chance effort.

I had never been there before and found the place to be very pleasant, although I was intimidated by the atmosphere of the underground car-park. It was eerie and I'll not be surprised if they filmed an episode of the Equalizer down there. The idea of wandering through it in the wee small hours with a wad of monies in my pocket relaxed my bowels considerably.

The idea I had in my noggin' was just for a casual game of poker. A few hours, one or two beers and then home. I assumed there would only be 30-40 runners. By kick-off we had 88, which was good news from the prize-pool point of view with £1,000 for the winner, but bad news from the point of view of getting home before dawn.

As things progressed I was able to filter out the shrieking brummie twangs bouncing off the walls and focus on my game and I was amongst the chip leaders for most of the tourny. I was able to pull off an audacious bluff at one point which would have had Jessie May mixing his metaphors to such an extent he may have swallowed his own tongue.

However, with the bubble approaching and with a combination of a lack of concentration and raw cowardice, I pulled off an equally bad manouever which cost me my bullying license and essentially reduced me to eeking status.

No way was I leaving there without being paid something. With about 13 left and the final table of 10 being paid, I reluctantly decided to eek my way to the final table and go from there. I finished 8th for a measely £80, which seems a meagre return for about 6 hours work, but in real terms it was a better investment of my time than watching telly.

On my return to the car park things were all quiet to my relief. But I was to have serious issues with the little machine that controlled the exit gate. Consistently throughout my life I've had troubles exiting car-parks. I like to think that rather than just a spasticated inability to work simple machines, there's a universal conspiracy by my present location, wherever it may be, at any given time, to keep me in it's company. I sleep better this way.

I was getting annoyed though, but when I pushed the little assistence button my irritation turned to hilarity because whoever owned the brummi voice on the end of the intercom was pissed as a fart. It's an accent that's hard to understand at the best of times, let alone through an intercom, but when the person is three sheets to the wind, it's just noise, not unlike a whale giving birth. I eventually worked it out myself and was back in civilised country within the hour.