Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

The commencement of the Diary catch-up, & replies to comments/questions, will have to be deferred another day, I'll do it tomorrow, I think, as I need to see a man about a dog.

[RED-DOG]

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Had a wonderful evening/night at Brighton, got back at 5am.

Drove down in a momentous thunderstorm, the "fresh" smell coming off the fields was wonderful. Sussex is one of my favourite counties, & I enjoyed poodling down there.

I had a shock when Flushy arrived - I barely recognized him. I last saw him late last year, I think, but he's lost about 3 stone I'd say, & looks completely different & altogether more healthy. He told me he has cut out alcohol, which may have been an airball, but I believed him. He looked magnificent, must be said.

He's golf mad now, of course, as I knew he would be if he took it up, & he kindly invited me to play 18 holes today, but I'm nowhere near ready yet, I need to sort out some new clubs, & my friend Squawky will help me with my swing, which is full on agricultural.

He had a pal with him, Brendan someone, who is/was a PGA Tour Caddie, including for Westwood. We teamed up & chatted, & I liked him immediately.

Flushy was doing the golfers posing thing, one hand nice & tanned, the other hand pure white!

Chatted with Paul Parker for an absolute age. His ensemble was a straw panama, light lined jacket (suitably creased), with a yellow polka-dot hankie in the breast pocket, canary yellow strides, wide-hooped socks. Extraordinary. He was a little merry, & started on guinness before moving to the red. We chatted for an age about George Geary & associated stories.

Steve Lennon, Shana Casselleta (sp), & all the Brighton regs, many of whom I've known for 10 or more yesars, were all present. I love the Brighton regulars, & I am made to feel very welcome down there by everyone.

I spied the aggro gay, Mr Hyphen-Whatever, but we steered clear of each other.

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Oh God......

PLEASE mention Raj's elbows if you see her today. Secretly, she loves the attention her elbows are now getting. She deliberately wears above the elbow blouses now.

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I failed in the £200 Double Chance at Brighton, never got going, but my Table was tremendous fun, & we all had a ball.

I found a real sweet spot with A-K, I was playing 7k at 200-400, & it went R to 1,500, call, call, call, so I jammed & was acccommodated perfectly, by Q-Q, but missed, no complaints there.

Still, I won the L-L with Flushy, which included the loser fessing up on Twitter. Who'd have thought that Flushy would become a tweeter? 

As I exited my table, a huge cheer arose from the DC game, "we have reserved a seat for you, come on" shouted Flushy. He had reserved the seat next to him for me. To his right......Bastard.

Officially it was a £2 £2 DC game, but the range of games was insipid, & we just played  4 card O. I wanted to play 7CS, but felt I'd have been booed off the table. Old mans game, see?

It was playing a bit deep by my standards, but I sat in with £1k, & nitted up, trying to concentrate on pot control first & foremost. I failed almost immediately, though, finding myself in a cute spot & with no choice but to pot it on the turn for about £600, to get rid of Flushy, who had about £3k behind, & who I fancied had a set. (He did). He folded, & I beat both the other two to take a £600 pot. I flopped a NFD & gutterball, turned a bad straight, & the latter was enough.

I just nitted up then - playing scared I suppose - & only ran 2 bluffs all night, both 1-on-1 on dry flops. I can only bluff 1 on 1 on dry flops in Omaha.

I found a few nice spots, but lost value by trying to major on pot-control, as I really did not want to be forced to get the lot in. Ran well, I guess, as I cashed in for £2,700 (£1,700 profit) at 4am. I'm on an extraordinarily good run at poker, luck is being very kind.

Fun game, nice company, thoroughly enjoyed it.

Drove back steadily & happily, slept well, but feel very tired now.

Off to Luton shortly, am meeting Tom & going to show him a local beauty spot. In Luton, would you believe. It's true. Photos tomorrow, maybe.

PS - Had some really lovely PM's overnight, will reply tomorrow, or later today.

PPS - bobby1 - Post more!

[mondatoo]

Glad I'm still not on fb.

I think the whole excuse of it being online so it's not real life is absolutely ridiculous. The feelings evoked from comments made, is real life, but people are twats in real life as well.

[mondatoo]

That said, you are, way oversensitive 

[david3103]

Get a Power Monkey. I'd post the link but I'm on via the phone.

Effectively it's a power storage device, holds charge for a long time and recharges phones, ipods, laptops et al. Avoids the need to find a power socket to plug your charger into, and is easier to transport.

Never travel without mine.

Arise, Sir David.

Tom arranged purchase of one of these for me, showed me how to work it, & set it all up for me, & I never go anywhere without it now, it's some great piece of kit.

It's so incredibly well-constructed, too, real precision engineering, with every possible accessory, & an adaptor for every single phone model. It's so good, & comprehensive, & everything fits together so well, that it reminds me very much of stuff manufactured by Dyson.

Oddly, it only gives me one full "charge" before expiring, but as I can now stretch my battery life by other means, it's just fine. 

Good spot, David, thank you.

I feel as honoured as if Her Maj had said it!

On matters arising further on in the thread I feel as disgusted as I would if Red-Dog had been a friend. Facebook has many positives but the apparent total lack of moderation is a huge weakness.

[Karabiner]

Just got back from a 14-hole solo gallop around Wollaton Park Tony, you'd have loved it.

I had the course virtually to myself and noticed loads of crows picking the remnants of their winter coats off the backs of the red deer for nest material I guess and the stacatto machine-gun sound of woodpeckers was all around me. I hit a few decent golf shots too.

[tikay]

Just got back from a 14-hole solo gallop around Wollaton Park Tony, you'd have loved it.

I had the course virtually to myself and noticed loads of crows picking the remnants of their winter coats off the backs of the red deer for nest material I guess and the stacatto machine-gun sound of woodpeckers was all around me. I hit a few decent golf shots too.

Excellent! That's the kind of post I adore.

Flushy was very complimentary about your golf game, I might add.

A few Diary Posts coming up may interest you, Ralph....

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I took Red for a little countryside excursion yesterday, & we had an absolute ball.

If ever you want to learn about the countryside, & nature, have an hour in the country with Tim, it's just the greatest.

The story will follow, but amazingly, we had a discussion about an animal which is becoming incredibly common in the UK, almost THE most popoluos species of Deer in England now, I gather. And Tom had never heard of it!

I had seen one of these recently, & mentioned it, but Tom never knew of it. That's gotta be a first.

It's called a "Muntjac", & is invariably spelt incorrectly, usually "Monkjack". It's a sort of miniature Deer, sort of the size of a large dog.

Here's it's Wiki page.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muntjac

The photo below is misleading as to size. In size, they are to regular Deer what Shetland ponies are to horses.

[RED-DOG]

I took Red for a little countryside excursion yesterday, & we had an absolute ball.

If ever you want to learn about the countryside, & nature, have an hour in the country with Tim, it's just the greatest.

Not strictly true. I notice a lot of things and appreciate them, but I often don't know what they're called. I can be really familiar with the behaviour of some bird or animal, but to me it will just be "One of those things doing that again".

There are exceptions. Sycamores for instance.....

[Karabiner]

Who's this Tim geezer?

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Who's this Tim geezer?

Bugger, owned again.

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We saw more of these than I've ever seen in one place in my life, too - Jackdaws. They are "Corvidae", as are crows, ravens, magpies, jays, etc.

On the Corvidae wiki page, note the sections on "Social Life" & "Intellligence".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvidae