Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[Claw75]

What a fantastic tribute to Mr End.  That needs to be adapted into a blonde hall of fame entry IMHO.

[RED-DOG]

What a fantastic tribute to Mr End.  That needs to be adapted into a blonde hall of fame entry IMHO.

No Claw. They're talking about Mosley, the Nazi perv now.

[kinboshi]

And now, the drug Cheat Dwayne Chanbers is a hero again, media hype follows him eveywhere. And he looks in the eyes of those he cheated without flinching. But he's a bloody cheat & a liar, & has no shame, & nobody seems bothered.

Oh, he's nobody's hero.  In fact, if he ever does play a competitive game of rugby league (which I doubt) he's going to have one hell of a welcoming committee.   

[Claw75]

What a fantastic tribute to Mr End.  That needs to be adapted into a blonde hall of fame entry IMHO.

No Claw. They're talking about Mosley, the Nazi perv now.

[tikay]

What a tribute from tikay. Happy birthday, TightEnd.

ps. Face the same direction, than call him a grumpy fart. 

No no no. Face the same direction, say he's all heart. By the time you've turned him, he'll gladly accept he's a fart. Cooey-wooey Rules.

[tikay]

And now, the drug Cheat Dwayne Chanbers is a hero again, media hype follows him eveywhere. And he looks in the eyes of those he cheated without flinching. But he's a bloody cheat & a liar, & has no shame, & nobody seems bothered.

Oh, he's nobody's hero.  In fact, if he ever does play a competitive game of rugby league (which I doubt) he's going to have one hell of a welcoming committee.   

I thnik that may be the whole idea. He has that blind arrogance most cheats & scammers possess, & has not realised the whole thing is designed to give him a wake-up call. Them Rugby League boys don't mess about, & he'll only play the once I fancy, & not for long, before he realises the score. I have no desire to see him, or anyone else, deliberately hurt, but a little puncture wound to his inflated ego would not go astray. He'd burst like a balloon. Pfffffffffftttttttttttttttt!

[tikay]

What a fantastic tribute to Mr End.  That needs to be adapted into a blonde hall of fame entry IMHO.

As ever, I forgot to add one thing to my Tighty piece.

I've never seen anyone, anywhere, take so many sick beats at a poker table as he has over the last 6 months. But he's proper grown-up about them, accepts that it's just a game, & does not go sulk in his corner afterwards. Even some hardened Pros still bleat on about very beat they take, whilst forgetting the outdrwws they impose on others.

But Tighty just taps the table stoically, gets up, & toddles off. In fact, as he leaves, he sometimes does that Eric Morecambe funny hands-behind-the-head skip & a jump thing, "whahay!". Some sight, I can tell you.

[Longy]

 that's how I came to be drinking, too, a practice I ceased on my 21st Birthday.

Tikay why do you stop drinking at such a relatively early age?

Obviously I understand if you do not want to get into details, it interests me at least. Being such an integral part of British culture for good or bad, has this tea total life style made your life different to what it might have been.

Im someone who enjoys a drink while and to be honest most of the people I socialise have become friends over a drink down the pub.

[tikay]

Gala get Interest-ed.

Gala Group had to go get a £125 million Cash Injection this week from it's Private Equity owners, to keep it's creditors happy.

£85 million went straight away to pay down debt, & the other £45 million wil be used to give some headroom to their perilously thin working capital.

Gala must have changed hands more times than enough in the last 5 or 10 years, it gets hawked from one Private Equity Fund to another. As a leveraged buyout victim, in effect, the buyers mortgage the Company to pay the buyout fee. (In effect, the company borrows money to buy itself). That's all well & good in a rising market, or if there is easy improvement to be wrought, but if things go wrong, disaster is rarely far away. The price was £2.5 billion last time, all borrowed, so the problem is clear.

Since then, Gala (they own 1,500+ Coral Betting Shops, 165 Bingo Halls & 31 Casinos) has been squeezed on all fronts. The smoking ban has hit the whole estate badly, tax rates moved the wrong way, & a loophole in the Slots legislation was closed, cutting off a big chunk of easy revenue.

We think of Gala as a Poker Venue, but of course, in the grand scheme of things, Poker is of no real import to them, (or indeed Grosvenor or Stanley), it's small beer.

They will be broken up & sold quite soon, I'm sure of that - no other options exist. They have rebuffed several approaches (standard bargaining) but the end is now nigh.  Genting (the acquisitive cash-rich Malayasion Group) are out of the equation (Monopoly issues), but Harrahs might be OK, their LCI deal does not have much Gala overlap.

The scope of the problem is glaringly obvious.
 
Gala Group made an Operating Profit (pre-T,I, & D) for the year to last September of £309,000,000. After they paid their Interest bill, they ended up with a loss of £127,000,000. Yes, £127 mililon. (Loss of £112,000,000 the previous year). Interest rates could well head North soon, & that will just make it worse.

Gala have an interesting headache.

[Karabiner]

I'm sure that Mugabe will do the decent thing and bow out gracefully....

[tikay]

 that's how I came to be drinking, too, a practice I ceased on my 21st Birthday.

Tikay why do you stop drinking at such a relatively early age?

Obviously I understand if you do not want to get into details, it interests me at least. Being such an integral part of British culture for good or bad, has this tea total life style made your life different to what it might have been.

Im someone who enjoys a drink while and to be honest most of the people I socialise have become friends over a drink down the pub.

I get asked that a lot, so much so in fact that I almost feel like I'm an oddball because I don't drink (well I am, but you take my point).

My reasons for giving up were simple.

1) I only drunk because of peer pressure. Going out with a bunch of teenage lads, I could not handle the ribbing if I asked for a soft drink, so I drunk alcohol to "look big", or because I felt silly saying I did not drink. It did not do much for me, I could take it or leave it.

2) When I got drunk - usually very quickly - I did not handle it well. Some folks giggle when bladdered, others talk a lot, others fall asleep, some get aggressive & bolshy, & become thoroughly unpleasant Company. I was worse than all those - the old projectile vomiting thing. Do that on a London Bus over your fellow passengers a few times, & it soon slows you down.

3) The hangovers, oh my God, is there a worse feeling? And that sway-ey thing when you lay down & feel nauseous.

I had a good drink on my 21st Birthday - which, as it happens, was almost the saddest day of my life for other reasons. My Dad, who I adored, forgot it was my 21st, & when he remembered, he slipped me a fiver.....I was gutted. So, I went on the razzle, had too much, woke up the next day in a shocking state, & decided, there & then, "no more". Instead of taking away the woes & pains, alcohol made them worse. Sod that for a game of marbles.

....and to be honest most of the people I socialise have become friends over a drink down the pub....

I can understand that point only too well. I lack certain social skills, conversational mainly, because I loathe & hate everything about being in Pubs & Bars. I walk a mile in tight shoes to avoid having to meet folks in pubs, & come up with every excuse under the sun to duck out of meets in pubs. I have not spent more than a total of 2 or 3 hours in pub in 30 odd years, & I hope I never waste a minute of my remaining life in a boozer.

Poker has been good for me in that respect, because it's taught me the art of conversation with strangers, & I'm 100%, totally relaxed & comfy at a poker table, even if they are all strangers. It rarely takes me more than an hour to oil all the wheels, & we are soon all laughing & chatting. In turn, that "skill" (if skill it be) has served me well on TV, where I blather away exactly as I would if talking to mates at a poker table. (Except last night's Show, but that's another story). I've done over 200 TV Shows, including over 300 hours of Live TV -  & never "froze" or dried up once, simply because poker has given me conversational skills I previously lacked.

has this tea total life style made your life different to what it might have been.

Yes, very much - but very much better. I can't chat up Girls/Women to save my life, & in a pub, I break out in a cold sweat,  start counting the ceiling tiles to while away the time, I just can't handle that bland small-talk drib-drab pub convo. But I've seen the fools others make of themselves post-alcohol, & if only they could see themselves.....That "ooh, it's Friday, I'm gonna drink myself silly" thing just whooshes me. And next day it's a big-dick contest, to see who drunk most. No thank you.

All that time I've saved by not drinking, well, I wish I'd put it to good use, but I have probably wasted it. I'm happy with my own company - very - & I adore solitude. If poker ended for me tomorrow, I may become a recluse & never speak to a soul again, but I'd be happy as larry, with my books, & google.

I have no moral issues with drink or drinkers, (their appalling behaviour in front of me excepted) I just don't want to be part of that scene. I need to increase my tolerance to boorish drunks, because I tend to be very "short" with them. (And why not?).

I have invibed the odd glass of wine, if I'm dining with female company for example, & quite enjoy it. I'd like to like wine actually, I envy occasional wine-drinkers, they seem so relaxed.

Shame I was not so bloody sensible & logical with the ciggies. I gave up in 2006, & I'm just so ashamed of myself for starting again. Ah well, it's on the tick-list.

An interesting question, & it's helped me self-analyse some things, thank you.

[RED-DOG]

"What a great night we had, I can't remember a bloody thing"

[tikay]

I'm sure that Mugabe will do the decent thing and bow out gracefully....

Well, I jumped the gun there a few days back, & thought he was gone, but though I've not seen the news today, the last I heard it sounded bad.

Apparently, the Opposition Party got 50.3% of the Popular Vote, & claimed victory, as a simple majority is all that the Constitution requires. But Mugabe's henchmen said "ahh, you have to have a majority". The Opposition said, "we do, we have 50.3%". Mugabe's crew said, "ahh, no, not the way we count it does not".

Then the Deputy Information Minister (officially a a Civil Servant, & thus duty-bound to be impartial), came out & said "Mugabe has NOT lost, he WILL stand for the second Vote, and I'm certain he will win". The last part was said with such certainly it was almost as if he knew the outcome......

Shades of Idi Amin, & that in itself was something I reflected upon recently - he deported all the Asians, & it was a very bad time for them, but it's kind of worked out superbly for them in the long-run, & indeed for the UK, where so many of those Asians ended up. Another another story......

Quite how Zimbabwe will recover from Mugabe I don't quite know, but I know that they will. It's amazing how these things come full circle over time.

[tikay]

"What a great night we had, I can't remember a bloody thing"

There you go! I know that man. "But I was more pissed than you". "No, I was pissederer than you".

I heard another pearl of wisdom last night. Two guys were discussing a poker hand (what else?), of course it was a bad-beat yarn, but the geezer said "so he dwelled up for about 45 seconds & then insta-called".

[spacefrog]

the oaf Mosley thinks he can hang onto his job.  I bet he probably replied, "No Princey boy my old mucker, I don't mind at all".

This makeing me have a good laugh. It is English to hate him, the man is just having some sex. No killing or some thing like that. French way is best. Sarko et Carla this is not happen ever in Engand. I like F1 but every know Mosley is idiot before, so t he have some sex? more a thing if he have no sex ever.