Bingo, how hard can it be?

I really have tried to get to grips with offline Bingo, but I am from the generation that never really got the Bingo thing and what's more, have always associated it with an old persons past time, right up to the point when I moved that is. I live opposite a new casino and on the second floor they have built a Bingo hall with great big glass windows so that people like me can see what they actually do in a Bingo hall. To my utter surprise the hall is filled nearly every night, and there are as many young players as there are old.

Even the prize money is also good with £500 and £1,000 games and with sponsored evenings where the prize is a whopping £10,000. So all my prejudices aside I headed for the Bingo hall thinking how hard can it be? I will just buy one or two tickets, pick up £500 and head for the Poker tables. No harm done.

My wife who is a Bingo fan, actually went through the what to do's and sat me opposite her so that she could check on what numbers (if any) I had missed. “Yeh right, as if I am going to miss some of the numbers” I said, “ bring it on”

She looked at me in the way that wives do and said “listen, it happens fast and people do make mistakes”. I couldn't believe that I was getting a lecture about marking off numbers on a card. “Look”, I said “ there is a woman over there that is at least 80, so I think that someone in their prime (me) and a clever chap to boot might just get the general idea”.

Her “what ever“ was ringing in my ears as the first number was called.

How easy is this, listen to the call of the numbers and mark them off and wait to see who shouts first.

“LINE” echoed through the room. Dam it, I only needed 3 more and I would have been a winner, then I could go home with a knowing smile on my face.

Now we were playing for the house, same thing again, numbers called “House” shouted and we all turned to the next page. Then it all went wrong.

The waitress that came round asking if we wanted drinks was the first distraction and cause of my first loss of concentration, closely followed by a woman's mobile phone playing Bolero to announce an incoming call, which she didn't take and let ring. It was too late for me to win that game now as I had already missed 2 numbers.

Game number 3 was going to be different and I was going to concentrate like no other before me. Here we go, first 10 numbers and nothing happened, then “LINE”. The first number that was called for the house threw me as I couldn't find it on my card and started to fall back, my wife was giving me the numbers that I missed and the caller stopped for no man.

“80, blind eighty” wait I have that already?? “what was the last number?” I asked in panic, “18” came the answer, but wait, I have that too!

Something had gone badly wrong and I was lost, worse was the fact that I was close to getting a full house and if I shouted and it was a false call, then everyone would know that I was an idiot. “HOUSE” thank god for that, problem solved, just turn the page and pretend nothing happened.

Lecture time, “look you need to pay attention and concentrate on your card”. “All the numbers are in rows, and you have every number that they call, so make sure you cross everything off”. Yeh, yeh, I get it.

Game 4 started well and I was 1 number off getting the line when my wife shouted “LINE” nooooo, disaster struck, there was no going back and I really had this feeling of total loathing for a game that would make my wife a winner and me an idiot. Gloves off and game on.

At this point I was distracted again, but I need to explain. Bingo pens are a great invention and one dab of the pen crosses off a number quick and as effortless as you like, but, if you get too over zealous with the dabbing, the ink doesn't dry quick enough and you get ink on your fingers, which is how I got distracted for the 4^th time in under an hour.

Dam I have ink on my fingers, and on my shirt, “legs eleven” (whistle) what? Now I am drifting and need to get back in, “one and two, twelve”. Now at this point and in my defence the numbers book that I was working from had 1, 2 and 12 all in that box, so when they called “one and two, twelve”, I ticked all three, thinking how lucky is that, then I realised that “one and two, twelve” was only one number and that number was 12. There was no way back from that and I more or less stopped playing at that point.

If my only purpose on this earth is to keep my wife amused, then I fulfilled it that evening. I have been back a couple of times and have lost concentration on a regular basis and was finally asked by my wife to not go with her any more as she couldn't believe that I was that bad, and even accused me of putting it on. I wish that was true, but on this evening I hung up my offline Bingo pen for the last time and decided to play online.

More to follow..........