Prospect from a bar stool (part 2)

Categories: uncategorized

Tags: local

Date: 31 December 2006 10:33:17

In all sorts of ways the pub's got more boring under the new management. I spent an hour or so there the other night and hardly talked to anyone. Maybe it'll pick up later. Maybe its just me reacting to having been one of the "in" group before (ore rather one of about four different in-groups) but now watching a different set of people in that position. But changes are happening and more are in the pipeline.

One change is that S's idea of a poker school seems to be coming off. Most of the card playing that's been going on for the last ten years or so has been the elderly West Indians who come in on Friday evenings and Sunday lunchtimes. When they tire of playing dominos - and the way they play it it is bloody tiring, all that hard work smashing little dominos against the table - they play some card game I still don't recognise and haven't yet had the face to ask what is. Maybe its some mutated form of crib, but if so its far enough gone to be not easily parsed by me. very occasionally some of the Irish construction workers or those Heythrop students who were around last year might have tried a hand or two of brag or five-card stud, but that was pretty rare and late-night.

For the last few weeks two or three of the twenty-something regulars and a some friends of the landlady's teenage daughter have occasionally been playing poker on the table by the northern door to the Ladies. A few days ago someone got some chips out, and this evening a green plastic thingy covering the table with little pots in it for chips (or beer bottles) and markings telling you where to put your cards. A sort of do-it-yourself casino table. Looked a bit naff to me. Though I like chips. I have been occasionally tempted to buy a box myself, though I don't play enough to make it sensible. And I don;t actually gamble really which would mean it was a complete waste. They just look fun.

If I was really an Intrepid Reporter, instead of some bloke who pops into have a last quiet pint on his way back from town, I'd have followed the game, but I didn't, I read the Economist Christmas Double Issue instead. I asked Bobby what game they were playing. "Texas hold'em". I suppose that makes sense if they learn their cards from the TV rather than their Dads. "Are you doing OK?" "Fucking awful".

Somehow I don't think I'll join in. But then somehow I don't think I'll be invited.