Bingo!

Eyes down for a full-house - bingo as it used to be - does it compare to Internet Bingo though?

Our village bingo hall by: Clive West

Bingo. When I was a child we would make the weekly trek out to our local village hall to join the ranks of other bingo hopefuls perched uncomfortably on rank after rank of wooden benches more suited to a hasty picnic than an evening of concentrated cerebral effort. In the normal course of life, if you had dared to suggest to any of these veteran matriarchs (as most were) that such a seating arrangement was acceptable for their aged and aching bodies, you would have been deafened by a blast far louder than any cry of 'House!'.

To an outsider, the bingo hall would have appeared to be relatively evenly-distributed with a standard assortment of mainly elderly ladies. Not to the experienced eye, though. Once you learned how to read the expressions, you soon realised that lifetime-long cliques existed. Wizened faces would point at other, equally wizened faces, and make (what seemed to a child as I was at the time) incomprehensible comments like "She's no better than she ought to be" and "I know what paid for that hat". I (much) later learned that such remarks referred to activities, mainly of the nocturnal variety, conducted during the War Years - some 20 years previous but clearly neither forgiven nor forgotten.

At some point during the muted cacophony of mutual mudslinging - the honoured bingo caller himself would arrive. This would be a clean-shaven, middle-aged man in an off-the-peg suit who was 'very popular with the ladies'. His poise and dignity always seemed to me to suffer a bit at break time when he would be found running all over the stage doling out Cheese and Onion and Salt and Vinegar crisps from large brown cardboard boxes.

The bingo itself would always begin with 'four corners' - a game where you had to get the four numbers located on the top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right of one of your bingo cards. There would always be a hushed cursing as 'the wrong' very low or very high numbers were called out.

The 'recent' war was further commemorated in a game called 'NAAFI Sandwich'. This was a bingo game whereby you had to get all of the top and bottom lines (the bread part of the sandwich) and at least one number in the middle (the filling). The joke being, of course, that a NAAFI sandwich was mainly bread - many of these indomitable ladies having worked in such places during the War Years.

There were many 'characters' in the old village hall who congregated for the weekly bingo. I remember listening to my grandmother lecturing us on how she 'would not be long for this world' and describing her many (real and perceived) ailments in more depth than we would have chosen had we been invited to comment. This great diatribe on her self-diagnosed frailty all came before she would set out into blizzards the like of which would have persuaded many hardened polar explorers not to break camp.

An extremely overweight lady had chronic arthritis and found marking her card difficult to do at the required speed. She would arrive early, perch her ample posterior hazardously on one of the benches and contentedly mark off every single number on each of her bingo cards. Unfortunately this action required her to remember every single number which had been called in every bingo game she played. Needless to say she often called 'House' when she hadn't won and occasionally missed it when she had. Either way a ubiquitous grumbling and muttering of indeterminate source would go around the hall.

After half time, came the raffle. Woe-betide anyone who won as the pure animosity liable to come your way from anyone sitting near you who had 'nearly bought those tickets' and 'would have had those if you hadn't been here', would threaten to outweigh the anticipated enjoyment of your box of Newberry fruits.

Being very young (only about 7), I had a sort of cuteness factor I suppose (not that I was ever cute). It lasted until I won the jackpot one night. Up until then it was 'Does he really do the cards himself?" and "Will the caller hear him shout? He'll have to speak up". From that evening on it was "Shouldn't be allowed - children in here."

After the final game and the last grimaces at the smiling winners, we would be ushered out into the night - often in the direction of the little fish and chip shop which only opened a couple of nights a week - bingo night being one of them, of course. If you won it was fish and chips, if not, it was sixpence-worth of chips and any batter bits which were going.

I wonder what those ladies would have made of internet bingo. I suspect that they would still have found something 'unfair' about it - "Can't trust a machine" I can almost hear them saying. I think as long as it came with chat facility capable of withstanding the withering blasts of even the lewdest RSM they would be OK.

About The Author

Clive West is the Marketing Director of Anysubject Ltd based in the company's Italian office. You are welcome to use this article as long as it is unedited and a link to www.anysubject.com and www.anysubject.com/helpful-guides.asp are included.