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I stayed up until 1am and not due to insomnia or panic attacks where I confront the passage of time and my own mortality. It was by choice, for a social occasion and I didn’t even feel very tired by the end of it. The easy part of it was that it was at our house (so I could have gone to bed any time) and we were playing poker, which is my kind of evening. Our Covid remote games gang can now get together in reality to play and we’re doing so every now and again. It was a casual poker game, with no money at all changing hands (which is a shame as it’s a bit more fun even if everyone only puts a fiver in) and a good mixture of abilities (with some people new enough to not really know exactly what they’re doing and thus inevitably win some incredible pots). I didn’t really get any hands in the first game and when I hit trips I was beaten by an unlikely straight by someone playing 68 off suit (to be fair, it had been cheap to come in), but the second game had a bit more life to it. I should have taken out the best player (apart from me) quite early, but he hit a queen on the river and got to survive. It dented me, but didn’t destroy me and we ended up heads up at the end, where I played with confidence and insight and correctly ascertained a couple of times that my pair of 5s was winning. And I did indeed win. The grand total of £0.
It didn’t matter. I’d played some online roulette (for the first time in ages) earlier and bagged £200, so my gambling fix had been satisfied.
It was a merry night, with most, but not all drinking alcohol, but it not really getting to that stage where the people who were drinking became overbearing or repetitive. We played an online quiz about 90s TV (no questions about Fist of Fun, sadly) and partly due to being sober and partly due to my ridiculous brain which retains and can rapidly recall a lot of useless information, I was beating everyone to nearly every answer. Can you recall the name of the school where Saved By The Bell was set (even though you were well into your twenties when it was on TV)? I can. Bayside High if you can’t. I even answered one question just from the three words “Which sketch show…?” It wasn’t Glam Metal Detectives if that’s what you were thinking, and it wasn’t Fist of Fun either. The Fast Show of course.
Obviously this ability has set me in good stead for the TV quiz shows I’ve been on. Speed of recall is the winning factor in nearly all of them and I have the kind of brain that has always been good at that. Even though my memory is failing me in lots of ways now - I find it difficult to recall plots of films and TV shows I’ve seen or things that have happened to me and I’ve realised that my panic attacks often occur on the point of sleep when I am thinking about something and then suddenly my mind goes blank and I can’t remember what it was and that upsets me (or, as happened last night, if I am thinking of someone who was close to me in the past and can’t remember their name). It’s understandable when it happens as the brain is switching off at night, though still a frightening presage of the kind of thing that must happen to you as your memories fade in old age and that temporary blank becomes your entire existence.
But it’s sad that I remember more from Saved By The Bell than I do from my own life in the 90s.
Another new podcast series for you to enjoy (though the episodes are going to come out intermittently, when they are ready) - it’s Can I Have My Ball Back? - in which I tell the story of my own cancer diagnosis, talk to other uniballers about what happened to them and seek out some bollock experts to investigate some of the more weird and wonderful aspects of testicals. The first ep features Richard-Herring-faced, motorcycle enthusiast Charley Boorman and
you can listen on the RHLSTP feed.
Spread the news to anyone with balls or who likes balls or who isn’t very interested in balls but likes interesting interviews and stories.
