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Hey tikay, it's been a while but I have finished my 6-monthly catch up on what's happening in here and it's great to see you are loving life and retirement.

I was clearing up some folders on my PC and came across a folder "Sky Poker Video" that I remembered saving a lot of entertaining clips to.  I'm not sure if you'd like to see them for the memories and laughs, or you would dread to see them?

There are 284 videos in there with interesting titles such as:

Mastercash Sat 25 Sep 2010 01 Orford Magic Trick and Tikays Fluff
The Club 21 Jun 2010 04 Tikay is your father
Mastercash 29 May 2010 03 Tikay I Love Buoys
Primo Sun 3rd Oct 2010 Orford Stuck Hand

Many an evening playing poker and watching poker analysed live.  Those were the days!

Oh my, Aaron, lovely to hear from you.

I'll never forget when you all turned up at an SPT (Leeds maybe?) wearing those "masks". What a moment.

Those videos? Last time I stumbled across one (Orford Stuck Hand) I felt super cringe, but I don't mind if you post a few. The whole Sky Poker TV thing was an amazing chapter of my life. I now know I was wholly crap at it, but no matter, I had my time & loved every minute. TV is SUCH a powerful medium, you only have to watch Darts on TV to see the power it has.

I still keep in touch with Richard Orford & Anna (she is a Mum now), & have nothing but fond memories of the whole TV chapter of my life, even though I now realise how bad I was. It does not matter though, I'm at the age where ego no longer matters.

I'm better off not writing that stuff down.

As time passes, I'm much more fabulous in my memory than I am in real life. Give me a couple of months and those two near misses will become 3 more eagles.

Don't know if you've seen this but the Train Spotter extraordinaire has gone and done a TV programme. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/mission-to-space-with-francis-bourgeois

Thanks Carl.

It might surprise you, especially as you know I'm a transport buff - trains, boats planes etc - but I've zero interest in space travel. I do marvel at the unbelievable engineering & computing that is necessary, but that aside, I never read or watch space exploration stuff.

Having said that, I'm still trying to get round Elon Musk's latest idea - putting a million satellites into orbit to be used as Data Centres. A million satellites. It's beyond imagination.

How is life with you & yours? Still pokering? I regularly see dear old Direwolf at DTD, but not many others from the Sky Poker crew.

Whatever. When is the book coming out?

So glad you seem to be enjoying your Great Retirement Adventure. When is the Honeymoon trip report coming  

Hopefully, I will catch up with you at DTD soon.

Hi Alan,

Hope you are keeping well. How's your lad?

When is the book coming out? Ha. A sort of "private" version, 100 copies or whatever, just for friends & acquaintances might just happen. A good pal is going to help me with editing it etc, so you never know. It seems a bit pretentious, writing an autobio, but some truly extraordinary things have happened to me, they really have. "WAL" in every sense. I might have to have it published posthumously though, there's a difficult blend between honesty & upsetting some folks, but it won't matter (to me) if I've moved on.  

Maybe see you at DTD soon. I see Direwolf ""Guy" there frequently.

And I bumped into this young lady at Resorts World Birmingham last night....

Sorry just catching up after starting cataract removal, my upgrade continues! I couldn't read anything until I made all the txt bigger and then couldn't read the instructions. Isn't middle age wonderful.

Great to see Alan is still here and that Brommers is still looking as fab as ever.

Hi Shaz,

You've certainly been in the wars the last few years. I do hope things have settled down now health-wise & life is good.

[Parkinson's Law;]

Parkinson's Law;

Work Leisure expands to fill the time available.

I love writing, & when I retired I was determined to write a lot more. Bit of a fail though. Somehow, every day is full. I am in a lovely place since retiring, but it may sound a bit chirpy to bang on about how good life is, especially to others might not be as fortunate/lucky as I've been.

Anyway, I'll catch up on replies first, then maybe try & pen some stuff.

Thank you, but y'all are missing my obviously badly made point.

There are less and less, (or should that be fewer and fewer) reasons to actually write these days, and less,  (or fewer) places to do it.

People who would once have been writers are now vloggers, podcasters,  TIK Tokers etc, and those that were readers are now watchers and listeners.

I'm being hypocritical here because I'm a big podcast fan and I often listen to an audio book rather than read it.

Like I said, I don't know what I'm complaining about really but I just feel like I'm losing something.

Which brings me to something another good friend of mine used to say:

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Do any of you golfers keep "eclectics"?

In my Golf 1.0 period, 30 years ago, they were quite a thing, but I never see mention of them now. Think I'm going to try & do a 2026 Eclectic Card, but I can't really remember how we used to do them, how we kept track etc.

I'm reminded of them by Red-Dog actually. Tom plays off 21, & yet I've seen him Eagle the 470 yard Par 5 16th at Breadsall Moorlands, as well as two other occasions when he had an Eagle Putt on that hole.

That included yesterday, when it was bitter cold ("feels like 23f"), so the ball does not travel so far, with not much run-out on soggy fairways, & yet he had a 12' Eagle putt. I'd not believe it if I had not seen it with my own eyes. On a really good day, I can just about get on that Green in 4....


Actually, I think Tom would love keeping an eclectic.

Anyone got any tips on how to keep track of eclectic scores?

Loving this debate, & well done EssexPhil for starting it. All the contributions have been good, even those from Red-Dog.

Phil was a mainstay of the now defunct Sky Poker forum whilst I was responsible for it, & he almost single-handedly kept it going with insightful stuff. I know him quite well personally, but his capacity to surprise, & come up with left-field debates was a constant source of fascination. You never quite know what angle he's going to take.

Great to see Enut here too, he's one of the few to understand how the minds of billionaires work.

100% agree. Utterly riveting & fascinating stories galore. How to make a cup of tea, how to take the dog for a walk, mixed in with less riveting tales.

Your writing on Blonde was exceptional.
The first post in this diary captured the imagination and the stories that followed were fascinating, moving, and educational.

Exactly this.