Since when did darts on telly become a shit version of Twitter? It seems as if most of the audience go and “watch” the darts simply to wave stupid pieces of paper with “hilarious” messages and badly drawn illustrations in front of the camera, to get their cryptic message on the telly. Unfortunately, as tonight’s tournament is being broadcast on ITV4, it’s likely to only reach an audience of 37, before they all end up in a bin bag This seems a little bit of a waste, so I shall increase that viewing figure to at least 39.

“HEXHAM M.A.G.S ON TOUR + ERIC + LIL” (Whoever wrote this must have aching arms, as they held it up for most of the night)

“HI EVE” (written on a paper plate)

“UP THE PHILLI I.P.F RED LION WHO ARE YOU?”

Some guy i constantly holding uo a sign with “PETE” written on it, and an arrow pointing down to PETE.

“LESTERS YOU OWE ME BEER”

“REAGN” (Could this be Regan spelled badly?)

“SHABBA”. How very 1994.

“HELLO MRS KINIEVEL” (Wonder if her first name is Fu?)

“MORE BLING THAN BOBBY GEORGE”

“KAREN FEED THE CATS”

“HELLO WOODHORN I LOVE IAN COOK ALWAYS AND FOREVER”. (I can’t read the rest of this one because it’s upside down)

“HOPE YOUR ASLEEP MIKEY & BAILEY” (I am aware of the you’re / your error in their writing)

“WILL THERE BE A POWER CUT OR DOES PHIL HAVE THE POWER?”

“IM THE ONLY SOBER 1 HERE!” (Seems like someone could do with a lesson from Bob The Angry Flower)

“LOVE CONTRACT”

“MOUSE AND BAZZA FEEL THE POWER” (Oh, I don’t know where to start with that one)

“IM WITH JESUS”

“HELLO UNCLE BILL” (Hello from me too!)

“GAYNOR” (written on what looks like a napkin – the stocks of cards must be running lowl)

“SOLAR POWER” (complete with a news article of someone catching a large fish… er, righto. This appeared before Phil Taylor lost in the Semi Final, obviously)

“HELLO KATE + JP” (The fudge? Someone knows I’m watching? Hello! I don’t know who Kate is, by the way)

“PROPER DARTS CORPORATION” (No, dear. The P in PDC stands for “Professional”)

“LOVEMAN N.D.F NO 1 ! !” (Note the exclamation marks on this one were huge. Maybe the writer just liked the smell of the marker pen)

“WE’VE FINISHED WORK AT LAST!” (Golly, I’m so proud of you.)

Someone also flashed their tits at the camera. I love you, realtime-pause on Sky+. (EDIT: Someone searched for “paul nicholson darts supporter big tits” on Google and reached this site. This is the proudest moment of my life.

“PLATEFACE” (Hahahahaha!)

“WELL DONE VIPPA” (I prefer my Vippa medium-rare.)

“MARKO THE BEST STAGE MANAGER IN THE WORLD!” (This guy’s been holding this thing all night, but was always too far away from the camera to be legible. For some reason, the cameraman thought it deserved a closeup. I’m a little disappointed, if I’m honest. Dale, Kezia says hi.)

“I LOVE YOU GREAT MATE” (Someone’s pissed?)

“FOR SALE SET OF 3 DARTS, HARDLY USED, 1 CAREFUL OWNER, CONTACT…. PHIL….”

“180″. (Something which I haven’t mentioned is that the cards have a blank area on one side, and a printed “180″ on another, with the sponsors name on, meaning that if a player scores a 180, the sponsors get a load of free advertising when the masses wave it in front of the camera. For some reason, someone decided to scrawl 180 on the blank side, whichmeans they either weren’t aware of the afore-mentioned pre-printed 180, or they didn’t like the sponsor. Or it’s one of the few who really, really couldn’t think of an inane message to scribble).

“140″ (Oh… clever!)

“LET THE DOGS OUT MATT AND STOP PLAYING POOL” (If he’s playing pool, how can he be watching the darts?)

“PHIL MY BOL FOR TEAM LEADER!” (You just know that guy is one of the people who, at a night out such as the darts, will sit there and just talk about work.)

“THERE’S A NASTY SMELL OF “GIT” IN THE VACINATY”. (You should have to pass a spell test before they give you these cards…)

“I’M NOT ILL! SORRY! I LIED!” (And you broadcast this to the nation? On ITV4? Don’t worry, your job’s safe.)

“HELLO MANSFIELD”

“HI DARLING LYN WONT BE HOME 4 DINNER. P.S DONT GIVE TO POPPY” (Wonder if there’s a reward for the safe return of missing apostrophes…)

“GOLF SALE <—-” (Well, someone had to do it!)

“RON JEREMY FAN CLUB”

“I [HEART] TARDS” (How very mature…)

“LESTER CAN YOU PLEASE PICK UP DAD HE’S PI**ED” (I hope Lester gets the message.)

There were probably loads more, but these are the only ones I could be arsed to type. Paul Nicholson won in the end.

Remember I was taking about playing darts and the nifty little spreadsheet I knocked up to record my scores? Thanks to the wonderment of Google Docs, you can see this document online…

linkypoo

Fascinating stuff, I’m sure you won’t agree.

EDIT: Seems you need to sign into Google to see it, even though I ticked the “no sign-in required” box. Sassen fassen rassen.

EDIT THE 2ND. Well, I’ve outgrown Google Docs already, filling the spreadsheet to its limit. Therefore, I bring you the “Open Office” version…

http://www.scribcam.co.uk/Darts.ods

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.

I started this post the other day, but thanks to hardware failures, it never got finished… Well, that’s what I’d like to blame, though I think it’s mainly due to my recent ineptness at being able to finish a post. therefore, let’s pretend this is Sunday Morning…

It’s 7:30 AM, and I can’t be bothered thinking of a title for this post. Oh well.

The first is the FULL version of the “Going For Gold” theme, which I knew existed in one of the episodes at the end of the first series, but I’d never heard it before…

Aaaaaaaaand, that’s where I left it. I got a bit caught up looking for other humorous Youtube videos and simply just lost track of time. Plus, as predicted, I ended up sleeping for most of the day.

One of the reasons I didn’t post it until now, was that I didn’t actually do the darts commentary as promised. this was due to the fact that it was on much earlier than I originally predicted (I think it started at 5:30, or something daft like that. I seem to remember it being later in previous years). Instead, I time-shifted it, and watched everything about an hour after it had already gone out on the telly. This is the ultimate bonus of HDD based video recorders. It means I could also fast forward the boring bits. This years final probably wasn’t worth dedicating time to writing about, as it was a bit obvious who was going to win. Of course, who could forget the fact that Trina Gulliver got beaten in the Women’s final on Saturday? My jaw dropped, as she got completely hammered by someone whose name could easily have been a 4-figure score in scrabble. Hurrah! Women’s Darts is another sport us Brits are officially shite at. Ahem.

I shall return soon with more non-hard drive related news, assuming my computer survives that long.

UPDATE:

Something which I must mention and have totally forgotten to in the last updates is that the gallery has had an update, and it’s not just any update. This one actually contains approximately 1,500 images, all courtesy (and copyright) of Andrew Dorrian, who shares my passion for abandoned places and demolition, and of course, streetlighting. The direct link is here. And you thought *I* liked streetlights.

On the subject of pictures, I found a CD I bought from the poundshop several years ago, packed full of “stock” images. Not clip-art, but actual photos. They’re so bad.

I shall be using these at some point in the near future on the site, but I won’t say when.

Oh, and I can’t leave this addendum without mentioning the feck-up of the week, by hosting company Dreamhost, who overcharged their customers to the sum of $7.5 million (link)

Ironically, I was thinking of changing my hosting to them a month or two back. Glad I didn’t. Not much point anyway when I can barely fill the disk space I have now!

Hello. I am Jamie, and I have been watching your annual darts coverage at The Lakeside, and I have a few suggestions.

Firstly, get rid of the current theme music and opening sequence. It’s crap. Bring back the famous 80′s combination of “Cranes” by The Doug Wood Band, followed by dramatic wiews of the camera flying around a dartboard. That was ace.

Secondly, I would recommend against Ray Stubbs wearing that stupid microphone on his face. I don’t know what made you think that microphones sellotaped to the side of the presenters’ faces looked good anyway. It doesn’t, and it never will. What was wrong with the old-style lapel microphones, or even actually holding one like they do when they interview somebody?

Also, when the players are actually THROWING, I would suggest keeping the camera on the dartboard at all times. Although I am quite aware that the audience have paid the entrance fee, I pay my license fee, which is considerably more, and, after seeing random views of the audience, I don’t expect to see a dart already in the board when the director eventally returns. This is expecially important when the players are throwing at doubles.

On a similar subject, please do not allow your children / cats / wives play with the mixing desk. Should you need to switch to a different camera angle, do it, and stay there. Do not skip through them all, and then decide the original one was better.

Speaking about camera angles, there is no need to have one of those crane cameras whooshing about the place. Yes, I know, the whole point of it is to show the “BBC Sport” logo attached to one of the lights, but it’s very distracting. Get someone to hold up a card with the logo on, or something.

Your on-screen scoring. Why the hell is it so small? Now, OK, my telly is pretty big, but we don’t all have super duper high-definition mega detail ultra-tellies. What have you gained by making it that size?

Finally, how about “rejigging” your schedule so that if you’re going to actually show the darts, how about you don’t leave a match right in the final stages, and say “Press red if you want to follow the match”. This involves having to find the original Sky remote, in order to press red. I’m sure your re-runs of Porrige are a ratings hit, but please, give more notice if you decide to push the coverage over to your… ahem… “interactive” channel.

One last thing… Sky Sports probably has a darts tournament coming up in the coming weeks. Should you not understand any of these requests, please watch this in order to see how you should really broadcast darts.

Lots of love,
Angry Jamie.

P.S. The BBC Sports logo above the “Lakeside” sign is too small to see on my perfectly normal TV. Please fix this so I know who is broadcasting.