Hooray!
Well, for those of you who hve been follwing the blog recently, you will be aware that one of the more thrlling stories recntly has been the orderment of a new dartbord. My faithful old one, which, admittedly hadn’t been used since 2001ish, was finally replaced.
After an absolute shocker of a day on Monday, I returned home, full of the joys of death, expecting for it not to arrive. The day had gone so wrongbefore then, that I wouldn’t bet on smethng like that not happening. OK, that sentence is barely english, but that’s the best you’re going to get.
Apologies if there are any missing letters in this post. I have just invested in a new wireless keyboard, which actually doesn’t seem to be very good at being wireless.
So, anyway. The morning. I was home, and decided to watch the grand prix I’d recorded from Sunday. I’d done a great job at keeping away from finding the result, meaning that I was able towatch a pre-recorded race and not know who’ won. That doesn’t happen very often.
I tidied a bit, and ate 2 packets of Asda’s Onion bhajis. They’re nice, but I seem to have got into the habit of overcooking them, meaning that I spend more time picking the black bits off than I do actually eating them. During the tidying, a large white van reversed up the long, sweeping gravel driveway leading towards Mercuryvapour Towers.
The delivery guy disappeared into the back of the van, and emerged clutching a large, square box, wrapped in plastic.
Excitedly, I rushed to the door…
“Is this… mercy vapour towers?”
I reply. “It’s pronounced MERCURY VAPOUR. You know, as in the type of lightbulb?”
He looked at me quizically, before handing me the package, and shoving one of those delivery recorder things in my face
“Sign this”.
Reluctantly, I signed. Tsk. Some fuckers will stop at nothing for an autograph.
So, there I had it. My first dartboard in 16 years. Lovely. I unwrapped the package, and was presented with… er, a dartboard. And some darts, which I’d also ordered seeing as my previous ones had gone walkabout.
I could hardly contain my excitement, as I stood it up on the sofa, and began throwing the afore-mentioned sharp objects at it. Obviously, the back of the sofa is not the exact professional height for a dartboard, so I guess you can’t be surprised to learn that the first dart to leave my hand missed the board entirely, and ended up sticking out of the sofa. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.
I was also considering using the excuse “Well, that’s because the last time I played Darts was in the Queens. With Coatesy. When he missed my epic final “Round The Clock” shot. Which still haunts me to this day”.
Er, anyway. Within the hour, the board was set up in my prime location, the off-shot.
Unfortunately, I’d misjudged just how small the wash house door is, so the board is a little lower (by about an inch or so) than the tournament standard of 5′ 8″ from bull to floor, and considering the majority of my shots are more than a foot from their intended target, I doubt this is going to cause a problem.
You may also notice that in the picture, the board is “upside down”. This isn’t an error. It just seemed to sit better on its holder that way.
The bull was christened on 11th May 2009, at 11:40AM…
Thrilling stuff.
Some other stuff happened in the day, such as the delivery of a telly, but by mid-afternoon, all I wanted to do was sleep. Throwing 24-gram bits of metal at a circular contraption made from painted sisal fibre, complete with steel inserts, manufactured in Kenya, marketed by a company based in Bridgend, becomes tiring after a while.
Now, you might be wondering why I’ve been sat in front of the telly, typing this into the website, when I should be in the off-shot playing the game I so dearly love… the answer is that I’ve actually managed to break one of the darts already! How good is that? I think that’s a new record for breaking stuff immediately, unless you count the time I bought “Mrs Jones” by Counting Crows, from Ebay, and accidentally rolled over the CD with my chair about 4 hours after receiving it…
Back to the damaged dart, it appears I sheared one of the threads on the “stem” of the dart, (the bit holding the flight) meaning that when you throw it, it now simply flops about, usually falling to the floor when the dart hits the board. Gutted.
Therefore, I’d just like to have an official whinge….
“Winmau, why did you include only one set of stems and flights in your darts? You clearly know just how flimsy these parts are, and that your product (or in my case, two products, darts and board) is useless without them. I remember buying a set of darts from you about 10 years ago, and was happy to find at least two sets of stems and about six sets of flights?”
I might officially complain. I probably won’t. I’ve ordered 10 sets of stems and 10 sets of flights from ebay, and they should be coming this morning, meaning that you won’t have to put up with my whinging.
IN OTHER NEWS, I… er… am struggling to think of anything else that’s happened over the last few days. I did go for another works night out on Wednesday. Somehow, for the past 11 years of being able to legally drink, I’d totally missed “The Clarry” as a place to drink. I can’t believe this was possible. Especially as we were shortly in the prescense of an Internet celebrity. Yes, Divvy Sharon walked past our group and asked where the toilets were.
After one in there, we headed about 2 doors away, to the Jacksons Arms, which has an awesome jukebox. Wednesday was the very first ever time I’d played “The Way it Is” by Bruce Hornsby And the Range on a jukebox. It felt odd watching people going about their business playing darts, etc. whilst listening to songs I wanted to hear.
I returned home, and hammered the dartboard for a bit longer, despite my handicapped dart causing all sorts of problems. Now, all of this talk of darts reminded me that back in 1998, I’d created a spreadsheet that would allow me to calculate a game of “501″, so I could play by myself (oo-er). It was a simple affair, which was created in order to give me a little bit of raw data to learn spreadsheets a little more.
I was amazed to find that I still had it, and that I’d been using Open Office (back then, it was called Star Office) since 1998. I was even happier to find it still actually worked. I’d have expected a 10-year-old file in an obscure format to be unreadable these days. Thankfully not! Since its creation on 11th November 1998, I’ve amassed a total of 60,523 points on it.
What’s surprised me more is just how quickly my brain works the figures out. I could go into the whole reason why I have to do the sums manually at the moment (no room for the laptop being the main reason) but I’d only be boring you with statistics in an otherwise utterly thrilling blog post.
Completely changing the subject, I’m still feeling a litle nauseous, as I have just had to clean the fridge out. Now, this is something that, as a male, I shouldn’t have to do, as it is a woman’s job (baiting for comments… done) , but when there’s a funky smell coming from the fridge, and there’s more out-of-date stuff in there than fresh stuff, it is time to investigate the cause of the exceedingly nasty niff.
After removing the (once green, now yellow-orange) apples from the fridge, and the smell still being present, it was time to investigate a little more. The bag of shortbread pastry mix, with a best before date of Jan 2007 was also ruled out of the equation as it was stil sealed. Suddenly, I looked under where the bag was laid…
BINGO! It turns out that some dairy product, possibly tinned milk, probably “fresh” milk (it was hard to tell), had leaked into one of the salad tray things, and was producing a pungent aroma that the world’s best cheese factories would have been proud of.
I was surprised at its consistency. It was the same colour and texture of scrambled egg. I removed the salad tray, and with the smell becoming stronger and my eyes beginning to sting, decided it was best to dispose of this in an open environment. I took the salad tray into the back garden and threw a bucket of water. I swear, I’m sure I saw the mucky mixture attempting to reform itself on the grass. I’m expecting a knock on the back door any second now, and a little voice asking me to put it back in the fridge, as it was too warm outside.
Next in the series, Jamie attempts to find out where the smell near the toilet is coming from… or maybe not.
