Of legends are us.a as a

Iovita (Greek meaning – Glad) Petronilla (Greek meaning – Yokel lady.)
Fabien (Greek meaning – Bean) Hortentius (Greek meaning – Garden.)

Community matters –
There was a time when the word ‘community’ had a slightly different ring to it.
In fact, the word ‘community’, although retaining its language definition in the English dictionary (as it were), sort of became lost as a meaningful word as used by entire communities in the past. I don’t see using it in the same context as used to be the case. At least not here anyway.
No point in me surmising and contemplating along the lines of: ‘I wonder what happened, it’s not the same anymore’.
Times change, things move on. The community itself has changed. This village of ours used to have a different feeling to it.
The same can be said the world over; what with seasonal property lets and holiday homes and conspicuously empty properties when they should be lived in, the lack of shops, the collapse of the local post office, negated and void local buses and bus routes, the failure of the local pub, and city dwellers with too much money buying out houses that locals can ill afford. All these things have squarely contributed to changing the meaning of the word ‘community.’
I’d like to think I wasn’t a contributing factor to the slow demise of the community in its old fashioned description and its appearance as one, especially where the village hall is concerned. After all, I do work locally and I moved from local too.

*

Village hall entertainment used to be pretty unique, as I recall. It was also completely ordinary, which only goes to make it seem as though it were unique – once upon a time.
It was a well-known way of life for village halls in the past to be used for local disco’s, for instance. That was a county wide accepted ‘evening do’ which happened regularly. There was never any wondering as to why a disco was taking part on a particular week in any chosen village hall, they just did.
There is the Christmas pantomimes annually – still. Some village halls these days don’t get those anymore. And hobbies; hobbies featured to draw folk in. Yoga, Keep fit, etc, etc. And OK, some of that still goes on, but in such limited numbers that the chances of the interest remaining seems to be on the decline. There was line dancing too, which used to be popular, and not just in village halls. There used to be such a thing as a Barn Dance. The group known as ‘Young Farmers’ used to be a key player in arranging barn dances.
Sometimes games of cards took place, such as Wist drives. And very definitely the annual Harvest Festival.
Parish council meetings always did and still do use the village hall – if you can call that entertainment.
Yes, it’s fair to say that village halls supported a great deal of activity that has since been lost in the mists of time. Activity and entertainment designed to galvanise a community together has all but gone now.
From various holidays in Wales back in the 90’s and noughties, memories of new village halls in hidden away villages all over the place brought credence to the belief that as in the 70’s and 80’s, the village hall (by the very fact that brand new ones were popping up all over the place) leant speculation to the fact that at least an effort was being made to keep communities together.
It is all of course an effort outweighed by the advance of time.

*

Bingo –
Here at home there was one particular evening that had been earmarked onto the calendar for ages. There was a blue ink circle around the particular date in mind, and around several others as well.
I hadn’t been living in this village for all that long in terms of years and had since been enrolled into several occasions, or events, whereby being involved in such a way seemed a very good way to achieve minor familiarity and local recognition.
The village fete remained an annual gathering that required the input from anyone with an interest in ensuring some form of interaction between village people.
I wanted to be a part of the local community. I didn’t want the spirit of village life to be seen as a half empty village and the rest of us falling apart at the seams because twenty first century life changed everything. For me, sticking together as a community mattered.

Evangalisa and I bought a place together in the village. She knew the village better than I. There’d been disruption in people’s lives and to clear it up we settled into this village community.
At this time I wasn’t the completely unknown anymore amongst a flock of folk whose intentions were overwhelmingly friendly.
In the beginning here,( as opposed to bygone times as a youngster), the type of local community socialising that was on offer – the village hall event offering whatever had been arranged by some dedicated and imaginative souls, was something a bit different for me. It wasn’t something that I was used to in quite the same way as what was used to be on offer.
My history showed up efforts of socialising in local village life in whatever form appealed to me at the time. The age thing definitely had a changing effect between then and now. Now I had a more mature outlook.
As socialising in the village hall was a community thing, its slot into the ‘life and times of’ – myself, was well worth the effort. If, where before I had avoided a game of Bingo in the village hall as a teenager, now I was embracing it.

To socialise in a close environment is made all the more harder when suffering from a hearing impediment. It also makes it easier – in a way. I am accepting of being hard of hearing for one and because of that was able to understand why having a normal conversation amongst a gathering of people was difficult. The fact that I wore hearing aids measured me up well with a lot of the residents who also suffered from the same hearing loss impediment. I therefore saw myself as being equal in some ways to those around me.
Far from being left feeling like an intruder, people went out of their way to include me, and us as a couple, into their circle of trust. We were welcome guests.
Some local folk were already known to Evangalisa before I turned up on the scene. So it was with the greatest of appreciation by myself that those of which I came into contact with then included me into their world.
There were good people here in the village. I was surprised by how well I was accepted. Maybe that said something about myself. The more I came into contact with locals the more I became a part of the village.
I now felt like I was a part of this community. I was known not as an outsider so much. I felt like more of a local these days.

*

Circled dates on the calendar were not always to highlight a dentist appointment or someone else’s birthday, they were sometimes there to indicate another village hall event. Or meetings in the village hall in the next village down sometimes. Even occasionally the village hall about ten miles away.
All three closely separated villages had the same name to begin with. That’s not so much an anomaly as more like a pretty standard type of thing really. Not that it was even a mastered thing, it was a mere coincidence. A coincidence born from that fact that these villages all were built up alongside the same river.

So, and as a result of community spirit, having an event in the village hall was also embraced by the likeminded folk from the next village down.
There was no … ‘umm’ … competition between different village communities, if looking in this instance at the communities in question as being this village and the next village down the road, as the likelihood was that for at least some of the events meant pairing together with someone else. And that may even mean someone else from the village down the road.
All sounds a bit school’ish? but no. Simply put, if you were mates with someone in the next village and you were going to pair up, then fair play.
All in all the comradery between both villages was good natured. Who cared if you were mates with a person from the next village down the road.
Well, for the two neighbouring villages, that was obviously always going to be the case. Would it after all not stand to reason that a little bit of support from the village down the road would go a long way, especially if it were reciprocating?
Of course. Sort of – stand shoulder to shoulder, as it were.

The ladies from both villages were always on top form for the supply of plates of food. The midway break was as much an event for the participants and the ladies preparing the food as was the event itself. Talk about socialising; that made it a proper gathering. I’m sure it was pretty much a given that folk would look forward to that aspect of any function. I know I did. Of course it had to be paid for to guarantee getting a slot, for obvious reasons. It was always a cheap plate of food however.
Yes, it made perfect sense. With both villages off the beaten track the moral support, if not actual support from those down the road, would be a good thing – going both ways.

One of the more frequent evening entertainment events held in the village hall was for example the quiz night. The chances are that this particular event would usually only happen in the village hall in the next village down. This due to the lead figure being from that village. She called herself an ‘event organiser’. And she was to be fair. She arranged stuff at old-folks homes. And that is event organising, all be it on a small scale.
Her arranged quizzes were pretty much orchestrated to only happen at the village hall from where she lived; which was the one in the next village down. I remember she used our village hall once. On reflection it may have been to show allegiance to both villages, or it may have been for another reason all together. Either way, her quizzes happened in her village hall as a rule.
There was always one quiz night appearing on the calendar that soon was to appear on an annual basis. This was one that didn’t include the events’ organiser person that we knew of. On this occasion she was more a participant than the organiser because this was the once a year quiz night in the village hall about ten miles away.
It was a few years before we got involved with this quiz at the distant village elsewhere and only did so at the last minute during one year to fill a spot that had been vacated unexpectedly.

*

Game of throne – 
To endorse the alliance of close neighbour acquaintance, our closest neighbours had included us in the partaking of the game laid on for tonight from months earlier, by asking that we accompany them down to our own village hall. We accepted. We had circled the date and had been looking forward to it for quite some time.
Our closest neighbours were regulars to this type of occasion, or game in this instance. This was definitely the sort of thing that saw locals drawn to the village hall. The folks from next door had even been known to take part in the same type of event as what was appearing there tonight, in other villages whenever it happened, so I was to later find out.

On the evening of the date in question that had a circle of ink around it on the calendar, at least some of the neighbours were hyped up. Certainly those living closest to us.
This was not to be the frequent quiz night that had over the years become a tradition almost, and a purely friendly and sociable event that didn’t include prizes of any sort. Tonight was something different.
On the way down to the village hall we encountered a few people that regularly frequented all the village hall functions, and by the looks of it were heading off for a proper showdown, it would seem. There was a palpable difference – sort of a more serious side, in the approach to the locals’ nature. This evening was after all an event that would happen as infrequently as perhaps once a year. But there was that something in the air that I was unaware of. Or no …., it was more like something that I was aware of, but blowed if I could put a reason to it. It seemed to me that all other folk we bumped into along the way to the village hall knew something, and I, or we, didn’t.
I had never taken part in this evening’s type of entertainment before. Not seriously anyway. As a kid we had played it in the form that it was devised for as a household game. Consequently, as a result of that being my only experience of the game laid on for this night, I was all but only mildly interested in achieving anything at all. I couldn’t imagine there being much to gain except to have a bit of a do in the local village hall. I had approached the evening with a non-competitive edge. I wasn’t aware of any prizes on offer.

*

In a previous village hall event here in our village, we had been taken by surprise at the sheer value for money and local bonding that can be gained from such a night out. Maybe it was that event that had reinvigorated my perception of how village hall entertainment these days wasn’t so different from my own experiences from when I was a youngster growing up.
As a teenager it was possible to see the quirkiness of it all. It was also possible to understand that this was local entertainment. And because I was younger in those days, the cinema figured highly on my own agenda, as well as further events like sporting hobbies, sporting and other leisure venues; which then did in their own and costly form further enhance the attraction of something taking place on the doorstep.
Now it was like a blast from the past. I’d spent so many years detached from this form of socialising.

We headed off from the house down the front pathway and met up with our closest neighbours in order that we could all walk down the road together.
I’d had to collect a bag full of various things before we left the house. I was reminded by Evangalisa that we needed this and we needed that and so I had a bag full of pens and pencils and blank pieces of paper.
We all walked down the road together and headed off towards our village hall.
There was some small talk along the way. The usual sort of thing, right up until the lady from next door (Iovita Petronilla) asks me whether I had a dobber or not. She was proper local with the accent, dialect and everything else that went with being through and through local.
I didn’t understand what she was talking about. It might have been because when being hard of hearing it just isn’t that easy to understand what people are talking about. So I asked her to repeat the question and she asks me the same thing all over again.
I never understood it a second time either. It wasn’t the question that stumped me, it was the words in there. I felt like a bit of an idiot because I still didn’t know what a dobber was.
Fabien Hortentius (her husband) jumped in and rescued the situation. He said to me that what she meant by dobber was some form of marking. A special type.
‘Well, why didn’t you say that the first time’, I think to myself. A pen is a pen and a pencil is a pencil. I never heard of either of them being referred to as a dobber before.
In reply I made it clear that I felt happy that we were covered with the aspects of marking onto paper.
I might have detected a bit of a snigger in return. It wasn’t lost on me. I felt I was able to psycho analyse in certain situations. So I applied reason, in as much as to say that all of a sudden I thought there may be at least one person here who possibly didn’t have the upper hand – and it was me.
But hang on a minute, it’s only a game Bingo.
Evangalisa breaks in and changes the subject. We all carry on walking down to our village hall and before long the subject of dobbers is forgotten.

Down at the village hall there were more people than seats, almost. The place was bursting at the seams. Looked like folk had arrived by the bus load.
There had been a booking process in order to accommodate tonight so I guess they were all here because they had booked their place. They weren’t here as an audience that was for sure.
Oddly, it never really occurred to me that all these folk were unknown to me. There were only the knowns appearing amongst them.
I’d done a few village hall events by now to know that this was not the normal turn out.
‘Had I not been living in this village for long enough to at least recognise the faces even if I had no idea who they were by name? Was this village a lot bigger than I gave it credit for being? Where did all these people come from?’ All these questions only sub-consciously floating around at the back of my mind.
Luckily for us, and as a group of four, we managed to get a table and seats quite near the front.
Iovita Petronilla and Fabien Hortentius settled in real quick for what appeared to be a competitive attempt at the game to follow. I felt that we were under prepared now. Not that either of us were bothered.
Iovita Petronilla and Fabien Hortentius knew exactly what they were doing and hustled positions of articles and seating to best effect.
Those preparations weren’t lost on me. Glad that I wasn’t attending for any other reason than to be there; it was no game plan of mine to beat anyone fair and square. I had a pen out in front of me, as did Evangalisa. I didn’t know the rules, felt under prepared, and didn’t really care. So we chatted between us.
I was quickly aware that being able to hear anything sensible was a non-starter. The background noise was too much. For anyone wearing hearing aids, or certainly speaking for myself, background noise interfered greatly with ability to hear direct conversation. To compound things even more, direct conversation was never going to be a part of this evening. I didn’t see a microphone anywhere and no speakers either. For me that was all the signs that this would be a trying evening.

Watching over the two pros next to us struck a sense of inadequacy within myself. These two knew what to do, I didn’t. I was going to struggle merely to hear let alone work out the intricacies of the game. Speaking of which, we were about to take part in a game whereby we didn’t know how to play it.
To get things moving it was time for me to cover some key aspects of the game. In for a penny, in for a pound, or, in for a sestertius, in for a denarius, as they would say in ancient Greek times.
No point in me stewing over the sheer volume of people here. We were here now and might as well give it a go, even though it seemed unfair that Bingo should attract so many.
I asked Iovita Petronilla for some game directions. Bingo as a game was always just a game to me from when I’d ever been involved with it as a kid. Right now, I was sat next to two very concentrated and serious game players. To Iovita Petronilla and Fabien Hortentius it was as plain as day that we didn’t pose any threat at all, what with them sat next to two beginners.
Iovita cracked another wry smile and did a double take with Fabien, following my request for some basic help here. Helping an opponent was not in the game plan for either of them, I could tell from the look on their faces. That said, what did we look like? Two clueless beginners there for the evening out as opposed to anything serious.
Credit where credit was due though. Iovita quickly ran through the game rules.
There wouldn’t have been any point in attending and not playing, so:
simple really, for the purposes of the game there was a line of numbers to complete. One complete line in any direction. Just blot out the numbers as they get called. There clearly was an element of luck involved. Everyone has a paper with different numbers on it and all set out in a grid formation. For one line to be completed didn’t seem such a big deal.
Iovita also mentioned speed. ‘It’s very important that you keep up. The caller won’t hang around for everyone to study the paper every time. You must keep up.’
But that was just a part of it – the smaller part. The bigger part of it was undoubtedly being able to hear the numbers called as and when they were called, and having the correct numbers in front of us.
It all seemed like a lost cause to me before anything even started. Hearing was too much to count on in this game. One needed a keen ear. So it made sense then that Evangalisa should be the listener and I should be the blotter only. That way I could direct all of my concentration on the blotting and number placement on the paper.
Whilst the others didn’t seem to have any issue with the acoustics of the hall, I on the other hand was going to struggle.

I did know one thing about Bingo. I knew that numbers were all referred to as something other than numbers. ‘All the two’s, twenty two.’
Great!
There was even more chance that a serious bingo game player was going to wipe the board here. They would know which number the saying would refer to before I heard the number.
Although I knew numbers were all referred to as a saying, or a made reference to, I had no idea which saying or reference belonged to which number.

Before the game started a guy at the head table stood up to make an announcement. Along with himself he had a colleague seated alongside who was to be announced as the caller. A gregarious chap with a loud voice; he also stood up and made himself known to all present.
The guy in charge made his small speech, stating that his role was to ensure fair play and administer the rules in a proper fashion.
From my point of view I was feeling more relaxed about it all. I surprised myself in that I could reasonably hear what both these guys were saying. This guy was a caring and consciously aware person who quite obviously wanted all those present to be able to follow the proceedings without trouble.
He went on to state that there would be so many games and then there would be a halfway stage whereby we would have a break.
To end up with there would be so many more games and the last one would be the main game of the evening.
There was a tray of prizes on offer for all the games, laid out on the table up front. There was the odd envelope; which from experience in prize draws no doubt contained an amount of money within, and various other good prizes. There was also the chocolate box and stuff like that too. All this, not to mention that there would be a raffle half way.
It was literally an evening full of prizes. It was no wonder there were so many people here. Also no wonder the entry had to be booked in advance, and paid for to boot.
Others knew Bingo and what it could offer. Things were looking up.
I hadn’t imagined in my wildest thoughts that there was ever going to be anything worth coming along for other than the village get together.

And that’s when the penny dropped.
All these folk here. Who were they? Yes, they had paid their subscriptions to enter, it must be a given. But no, why should they converge on a local village event to scoop up all the prizes on offer. That must be the case. There was no other explanation. Some of these (most, actually) folk I had never seen before.
I’d been to a few popular events and I was sure as eggs is eggs that I had the memory to recognise village people…. there was that time when the village hall hosted a betting evening. It was a crazy laugh from start to finish. A fantastic night out. And there wasn’t any strangers there from elsewhere. The entire gathering had been village folk from this village and the next one.
That had been then. The entertainment hadn’t been enough though to draw the crowds from elsewhere. Maybe it was because there hadn’t been anything in terms of prizes.
I had hoped for more evenings like that one. But they never repeated after that. There had been some talk about it being that way because there was no one to carry on the proceedings after the lead figure decided he’d been doing it for long enough and had now decided to hang up his hat – as it were.
Shame. It was a good laugh.

*

I had mixed feelings by now. I was supporting my local village hall and the local community. All the while the village hall was attracting folk from god knows where. Was Bingo seriously that serious a game that it warranted the big numbers here?
Well yes, apparently. And now I could see why. It was the prizes.
Evidently, over the previous years that this game had been run here in this village hall of ours the popularity had gained and the value of the prizes were known. Maybe it was even because the value of the prizes were known that made it worth getting here for.
These people then had all known something that Evangalisa and I hadn’t.
There always had to be a logical reason to all of this. I just had to work it out.

The subterfuge! ……………..well, it wasn’t in its strictest sense, I suppose. There was no ploy or trick involved.
Strategy then? Yes, I think a well …..probably premeditated, although also not in the strictest sense, game plan. From earlier, after asking Iovita Petronilla for some advice on how to play this game, it did now seem as though I now had the bare essentials on how to play. Also I did now realise that there was no helping one another here. It was each for their own. Evangalisa and I as a pair and them as a pair
And fair play, I guess. It works both ways.

The Bingo game started. The caller was on another level. In advance of any games the caller requested that if any of us complete a line, stick your hand up in the air, as soon as.
My wondering mind began asking itself why other people couldn’t go to the same bother when trying to make themselves understood. This guy was crystal clear. I had no reason to complain about his role. I was finding that hearing him call wasn’t the headache I had imagined it would be.
Everybody settled into the games with patience and calm. Yes, on the one hand I was a little behind the pros here because I didn’t know the phrases aligned with the relative numbers. Realistically though I just got on with it. After all, I could see a lot of luck involved with this game. Maybe the lightning fast reactions were not so required because if the numbers were in a line then that was how they were. Because everyone had a different set of numbers the likelihood of anyone being in exactly the same position as someone else was probably similar odds to winning the lottery. Too much odds for a game of Bingo.

Game after game came and went. We reached the halfway stage. Many prizes had been handed out along the way. Our game looked as though the winds were not in our favour. We hadn’t got anywhere near to a win so far. But not to give up too soon, now was the time for the raffle.
It felt like a consolation prize giving amongst the others dished out so far this night. Maybe better luck to those who had so far failed to win anything. Maybe the raffle gods would work in our favour.
There had been some really good Bingo prizes. Blank envelopes containing money (as expected), money to spend at the local butchers shop, and other well thought out prizes.
I was prepared to settle for anything on the raffle table, no matter what it was. Bingo as a game was fun, but it was fast becoming a little frustrating. All the wins were going to other folk.
And to make matters worse our raffle tickets fared no better.
By the halfway stage we were winless. And OK, we weren’t the only ones. It was annoying that most of the prizes so far had been won by these folk from elsewhere.
Our closest neighbours Iovita Petronilla and Fabien Hortentius had won a prize along the way. We congratulated them when it came to their turn to win.

The caller stood at an appropriate time during the halfway stage to announce that the Bingo games would continue. The halfway break was done.
He went on to explain that there would be so many more games and the last game would be the one with the major prize on offer. The prize was unknown to either Evangalisa or myself before the evening and up until right now. Maybe others knew in advance of tonight what it was going to be.
There was some audible gasping at the very mention of the main prize, from the folk all around, as the caller announced what it would be. When the caller announced what it was, the clarity of it was lost on me. Evangalisa nudged me with an excited expression.
A paid for meal at a local restaurant was not to be scoffed at. I didn’t know the restaurant. I hadn’t been here long enough to get to know it. Evangalisa filled me in with the details. The mention of Madonna brought a whole new meaning to the description to follow. This restaurant was well known. Not only was it well known, it had a reputation that was high class – and it was in a few villages away from ours as well.
From feeling depressed about the events so far, my attention took on a change of tack. All those games, all those prizes, and no luck. Winning prizes was great fun if it was yourself that won one.
A change in outlook was required by myself. I’d looked up to this point as the game being a game. Now, viewing Evangalisa’s excited expression, encouraged me to up my game. It wasn’t my fault that I felt depressed at seeing most of the prizes go to villagers from far away. I was sure that a lot of other local folk felt the same way.
I was happy that at least one of the prizes so far had gone to our neighbours.
Now though, this whole game had changed in the last few minutes. I was determined to give this one last game the biggest shot I could muster. If we were going to leave tonight without a prize we would do it with the utmost attention to detail and the most concentrated effort of game play possible to give.

Following the midway break the format continued in each game played and each winning prize allotted.
The numbers just weren’t falling in our favour. I had got so close to completing a line on a few occasions now, waiting for that one last number of mine to be called, only for the correct number for someone else being called instead.
All said and done, I was getting used to the way this all worked. Any completed line in any direction, horizontal, vertical or diagonal. It didn’t matter which way as long as it was a line. It was only now that I could see that the game wasn’t all down to luck. A good portion of it was. Looking at it seriously there was an element of skill that could (and was on me initially) be lost on a new player. At any time, anyone could pull the rug if you simply weren’t quick enough. We were up against a formidable opponent in all their forms. These people that had drifted into our village hall were well versed on the intricacies of Bingo.

Eventually there was only one game left to play. The prize from a previous game issued earlier and belonging to Iovita and Fabien sat temptingly on the table in front of us, just to remind us of how we had won nothing.
The caller marched into his calling role almost without warning and I had to race to keep up. The distraction caused big anxiety. I had to keep up at all cost.
Evangalisa helped as much as possible, pointing and listening. I aimed the pen at the numbers if and when they were called. I upped my concentration levels and took things to another level to increase speed of number heard to acceptance of whether it was one of ours or not, to alignment of number on paper (if it was one of ours), and pen to paper.
All in all it was a super concentrated effort that taxed my hearing impediment to the max. And my concentration levels – which at times had a habit of wondering.
The last game was a winner takes all, we all realised. The prizes offered against the previous games were mixed and all of good imaginative offering. This last one though saw all the participants go into extreme quiet mode and you could literally hear a pencil drop in-between the caller’s narrative.

I had a line on the paper in front of me with the exception of one number. Judging from previous games the last number was going to elude me. That I was sure of. Still, I had given the game the maximum effort.
The caller announces a number, the number 46. I knew I had that number as one that I wanted to complete a line. I jabbed my arm into the air at the same time as scribbling the number out on the paper in front of me.
I couldn’t believe it, I’d done it. On the last game too. The one with the major prize.
Evangalisa was completely and utterly ecstatic. So was I. Our neighbours Iovita Petronilla and Fabien Hortentius, smiled and congratulated us. It wasn’t lost on them that in this last game it wasn’t a non-local who walked away with the main prize.
I shouted Bingo at the same time as raising my arm.
Everything stopped.

I looked up within a split second of marking out my paper and saw the caller look from me to the back of the hall, as though his concentration had wondered.
There was some bickering going on at the back end of the hall. I couldn’t hear it clearly, but I could see it as I followed the callers gaze with that of my own, spinning myself around in my seat to focus on where his attention was now at.
Some very animated arm waving and indicating was pointing towards one woman at the back of the hall. What the hell was going on?
The woman herself was hyper with self-congratulatory importance.
I started reading in-between the lines as all other people’s attention was also now back there. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do other than sit there and be counted. I’d played the game and I’d complied with the rules. I’d done everything that I was supposed to do. I’d completed a line on the last game of the day for the major prize on offer before anyone else and had followed the directions of the caller from his original instructions. It seemed someone else was barging in with their own win.

All I could do was sit there. There wasn’t anything to argue at. I, for one, wasn’t going to make a scene like the woman at the back of the hall. I had a different approach.
The caller was almost fazed. He didn’t have the guidance to follow in such an extreme circumstance. And to be fair to him he passed the whole affair over to the guy whose job it was to ensure fair play.
The rule maker guy stood up at the front and dictated the rules as he knew them to be. It was clear to him that this was something that had not happened too regularly in the past.
There was a lot of confusion. At a point in time it even looked as though the rule maker was stumped. The woman at the back was being loud and unruly.
By now, bad hearing or not, I had the gist of the matter. There was a bitter irony to the situation, squarely as it was from this woman from the back. She wasn’t a local.
The volume of her protestation was getting louder by the minute, along with all her mates backing her up. But to what point, I wondered? It was a single sided argument. She was making lots of noise to the affirmation that she had finished first. This started to become more and more the point she was trying to make.
Sitting there in my innocence I began to wonder whether I had been too slow to raise my arm and shout out, or whether I had indeed completed both tasks in record time. I thought this over and over as it kept whirling around in my mind – Did I act fast, or was I too slow?
No, my mind was made up. I had done everything correctly. I couldn’t have worked any quicker. Both assumptions based on the fact that I had purposefully doubled down the attention and concentration levels for the ending of this game and specifically because I didn’t want to let Evangalisa down.
The rule maker guy was torn, I could tell. He had to deal with a concerted effort of persuasion coming from the back end of the hall and as a result the onus on pronouncing a winner looked as though it was going to go her way precisely as a result of and because this declaration of winning was only coming from her and not myself.
The more the shouting went on from behind me the more allies she seemed to acquire. All the people that I didn’t recognise.
I sat there the innocent party. I was beginning to feel guilty just for being there, let alone equalling a winning number.
What was the point in me shouting against these other people and her entourage when all the time I had been facing in the opposite direction. I hadn’t see her put her hand up and in my own excitement at the time of seeing that winning number I hadn’t (at that specific moment in time) heard her either. There wasn’t anything I could do so I didn’t.
It soon became apparent however that the more the shouting went on from behind me, the more the people at our end of the hall started to ask questions amongst themselves.       The folk around me could work out what was going on. The louder the shouting the more likely the winner be declared from the other end.
The rule maker stood at the front watching. One thing he absolutely had to do was fairly administer the results. I could see his gaze fixed at the back end of the hall with the intermittent flick towards myself.
It’s a funny thing – intuition. From all this disruption, at the end of the day, the rule maker had to find a solution and he knew he had to do this fairly. I then knew at that point just before he spoke again that he had arrived at a decision that was not going to be so one sided.

We hadn’t come to our village hall for an argument. We came for a decent game of Bingo. We also hadn’t come to our own village hall to have a war with the village about ten miles away who turned up for rich pickings and when it came to it and when the gloves were off, bend the facts too.
It was a lot to take on board; the fact that there were two of us with the winning number. Made even worse was the fact that without hesitation the woman at the rear of the hall insisted that she get the win.
It did appear as though there was one impudent person who wanted to win and to hell with everyone else, versus one person, mild and accepting, who was prepared to go by whatever the rule maker decided.

As I sat there, our table made some conversation along the lines of the issue in hand. Our neighbours were frankly bemused as to why the lady at the back was insisting the prize was hers. The more she whined back there, the more the momentum seemed to be gathering in my favour. There were villagers who started to stick up for me and in grabbing the attention of the rule maker made their feelings known. Feelings that were impartial and in support of a fair outcome.
I had the local villagers on my side now.

*
All this hullaballoo, all this raised voices, and all this unrest. It was uncivilised. This was only a village hall game of Bingo.
There had been nothing like this at the betting night a while back. That village hall night out had been uninterrupted fun, civilised and exciting. It had been so much fun that I had even considered conducting the very same event myself. It was a bit unfortunate that after the betting evening the promoters and the folk who ran it went on to say that it would be their last one. For whatever reason they’d decided that running the betting evening wasn’t to continue under their ownership.
On the way home that night I remember the hype that had stayed with me, and us. We’d walked home so had plenty of time to consider the outcome of such a brilliant evening out, in as much as we could walk and talk with total dedication to the subject and not have to concentrate on anything else. So much so that I suggested I continue it myself.
It was well intentioned too.
I did also realise that it would take a special effort to realise such a …. daydream. It was only a daydream. To run that type of evening would take effort, and genuine at that. To be able to allow gambling with the public there would be such requirements as licences and so on. But the daydream had to have a real tone, or nuance about it because you don’t go to an evening like that and just forget about it like it was some local quiz night.
Betting for real if you are not a gambler is intoxicating.
The last thing I would want to do is encourage gambling. However, with a betting evening such as that, the stakes are pocket change. A few pence here and a few pence there makes little or no difference. There had been a simple rule of thumb that if stuck to was harmless. Our stance had been that we turn up with say twenty pounds in our pocket; which let’s face it is well affordable for a night out where you may end up with more than you began with, and if it all was used, or effectively gambled away, then at that cost was no more than going to the cinema for a night out.
Simple really. A one hundred percent guarantee of being involved with an addictive past time and coming out a winner.
Following all the drama of the gambling night out, the creating and running of that most powerful social event by myself came to nothing. It wasn’t as though I’d had too much other stuff to deal with, but on the other hand it was at the same time. Back then I’d still had weekend gardening custom to satisfy and with everything else included in a working person’s life, sort of found the enthusiasm drain slightly as the weeks and months went by.
It remained in myself a bit like a drug, all said and done. I still remember it now as one of the best low profile social events that could be run with the highest level of value attached as an outcome. It didn’t matter if you won or lost, whatever the outcome of each bet, the onus was on the individual and the rules spoke for themselves. The race winner was the race winner and the rest were behind.
As the focus of the event was to gamble on who would win, therefore the winner had to be is some kind of race. To conduct this over a screen in a village hall the race then had to be long enough, and short enough, to enable all the folk there to be thoroughly engrossed in the race and the eventual outcome. Obviously this would be impossible if it were a tennis match, or a very long car race, or other race that went beyond a couple of minutes in length. So then the concept of running a filmed horse race made sense. Most gambling (certainly from years gone by) was centred on horse racing and why should anything change for this.
It works!
It could even work on a continuous timeline since the technology available to the world makes that kind of thing so much simpler. And that is why I still remember it, still have it as a daydream, still would like to take on that type of entertainment as the person who runs it.

*

Night at the Museum –
As I said, there had been nothing like this at the betting night a while back. That village hall night out had been uninterrupted fun, civilised and exciting.
Unlike now, here at the Bingo. The attention seeking from the back end of the hall was now raised and embarrassing.
I hadn’t been completely overlooked. In drawing attention to herself, her selfish act kind of highlighted the selfless behaviour of myself.
The rule maker stood at the front of the hall observing the whole scene. It was all bit silly now. Things had gotten to the point whereby I felt as though maybe the woman at the back should have the win, after all, she was making too much fuss of it. On the other hand, I had been a more than fair contender and didn’t I deserve as much credit for filling out the bingo card in the same time as her?
I sort of assumed that the rule maker was going to award the win to the woman at the back. Whilst I hadn’t made any fuss at all, it stood to reason therefore that I had kind of made myself invisible. There again, that could be sexist. It wouldn’t be impartial if out of a draw, one person was chosen as the winner without at least some kind of fair intervention to see who was more deserving. There were many known ways that this could be arranged, one coming to mind amongst all others had been a well ingrained fix that I had come to know so well when growing up as a kid in a big family. Many had been the time when drawing straws overcame a problem that couldn’t be fairly decided any other way that didn’t look as though there could have been some favouritism. Of course, back then the stakes were trifle in comparison. Such minor things as to seem nothing but child’s play; which of course was exactly as it was back then.
The rule maker turned on me and asked me outright as to whether I had raised my arm and shouted out at the same time. A strange question when the answer was always going to be yes. I weirdly found myself pondering the question before answering.
‘And ….. whoops!, could that have been seen as a mistake?’, I asked myself. Has the rule maker seen a chink in the armour?
No, of course not. This guy was fairer than that.
I didn’t need to reply. From close quarters and all around our table the declaration from all those villagers who by now knew who I was did point out to the rule maker that indeed I had acted in the quickest possible fashion and that from their perspective it had been a dead draw.
I confirmed it to be so.
The rule maker was not in a quandary. He knew he had to be ultra-fair here. If ever there was an even split in the village hall it was now. If he wasn’t careful there could be trouble. He merely had to appease the crowd from both ends with something that not only appeared as fair, but was fair.
I confirmed that to my knowledge I was the first person to finish the game and that at the time had made that apparent. I nodded my head in agreement with myself.
The rumblings from the back of the hall seemed to die down significantly. The rule maker, whilst stood at the front of the hall questioning myself, may have appeared from their view as more like I was being interrogated for doing something wrong. That’s how it felt to me at any rate. I began to feel a bit resentful. There were many fairer fixes available. As it was not I who was being loud and complaining, it came over in my mind that the he who shouts louder etc, etc. A bit like if you don’t ask you don’t get.
The rule maker called for attention and followed with an announcement.
The hall was quiet now.
In order to fulfil an orderly and fair conclusion to the game the tule maker had decided that we would have to compete against one another to decide who would be the winner of the Bingo game.
Far from seeing a conclusion to the stalemate, all I could see was more of the same. Another game of something to determine who walks away with the main prize of the evening. It was however, the only way to settle things and to that end I decided I would be polite and I would honour the outcome gracefully.
Flipping a coin hardly seems the most well devised way to appoint a winner, as it appears too flippant a way to justify the means. Never-the-less, It was to be the way forward. The rule maker narrated his decision and did flip a coin, but not to decide the winner of the Bingo, more to decide who would go first in the final settlement process.
In his deliberations the rule maker had come up with a plan to settle things once and for all (and for all I knew the same process may have been used before), so after flipping the coin he then asked each one of us to choose a coin side; which we did.
I won. But it was only the toss of a coin that I had won. That simply meant I choose whether to go first or second in the devised process that would settle the argument over who won the game of Bingo and who lost.

We still had no idea as to which method the rule maker had decided to settle the matter. Whichever way it would be, it was myself who would play the first shot.
Now the whole village hall was silent. For all those who were on the side lines, another form of entertainment was now taking place.
Clearly there had to be folk on one side and folk on the other. Also clear was the fact that to play this out the verified winner would be just that and there would be no argument to follow.
The rule maker walked up to me and produced a pack of cards. He went on to explain that in order to settle the draw he’d had to come up with some way that was going to please both people involved. He accepted that I’d done all that I was supposed to have done and in the manner of which it was expected of any person playing the game. So fair was fair, after the toss of the coin to see who would go first the only solution he could come up with was to split a pack of cards.
Could it be done fairer than that?
Well no, actually. Splitting a pack of cards may have been seen as a haphazard approach, but then wasn’t tossing a coin? They were both in the same league when it came to deciding a draw and either would do really.

The professionalism of the rule maker was impressive. I hadn’t expected that this result to be drawn out so expertly. I hadn’t given due credit to the rule maker whose approach was to absolutely ensure fair play.
He fanned out the pack of cards in front of me and asked me to pick one. ‘The highest value wins’, he said. I stalled a bit; which wasn’t lost on the rule maker who noticed. He went on to say that if I wanted, he could re-shuffle the pack, or if I chose he could get someone else to re-shuffle the pack.
All said and done, from my point of view, what difference was that going to make. I was going to pick a card and it could be any one of 58.
‘Aces high or aces low?’, I asked.
‘You choose’, he said. ‘You’re the winner of the coin flip.’
I went for Aces low and dithered about which card to pick. Bloody eck, was that the right decision? Going for aces high would increase the chances of getting a high number by a factor of four.
Come on Jeff, get a grip man. It’s only Bingo. Hang on a minute though, if aces were high, then the woman at the back would have four chances more of getting a higher number than myself. On the flip side, it could go either way.
Running my finger up and down the fanned out pack of cards, it was like I was hoping my finger would rest on the right one, or that some divine intervention may indicate to me which one was the highest of any suit.
Eventually I righted my own lack of confidence and pulled a card.
I kept the face down. I almost didn’t want to reveal the card I was holding, with the implication being that as soon as it was revealed it would show as the worst possible card to pull.

Who would have thought it. A simple game of Bingo one minute, a proper showdown the next. The atmosphere could be cut with a knife. The rest of the folk present were now an active audience.
I still held my card face down. I knew the rule maker needed to know the value of the card. I though, didn’t want the lady at the back to know the value of the card.
The rule maker smiled. It was a fair guess that anyone could have read my thoughts right then, as did he. ‘When you’re ready’ he said.
Evangalisa and I converged as I upturned the card to reveal its true value.
‘A four of Diamonds’, I said.

And that was it. I felt I had hopelessly failed all those who had stuck in my corner and that had insisted on a fair result. Evangalisa was let down too. She’d wanted to win that prize. Not because it was the major prize of the evening, but because she had always wanted to go to the Museum. As I was unaware of that restaurant’s name and ranking, I wasn’t so upset about that part of it. And it wasn’t the winning or losing that counted either, it was the taking part that mattered.
Except, it was the winning and losing that mattered in this instance, because I was in a showdown with a woman from a village about ten miles away.
In my attempt to break the deadlock I had drawn the four of diamonds. It was horrible.
Once the card value had been revealed to the wider audience the atmosphere from the back end of the hall changed with immediate effect. Some light relief for them back there.
The woman seemed justified to assume she had won, and won fairly. Her mates were full of congratulatory cheer
At least I had opted for aces low. That was the best chance I had right now. Four less cards to swing things in that woman’s favour.

It was demoralising. I might as well give it up right now. What are the chances that this woman at the back of the hall was going to pick lower than a four of any suit.
I had to get this over with because otherwise we were going to be sat here for too long with no resolution to the game. I didn’t want the game to end here under these circumstances. The game had been worth more than this. We’d come right down to the wire only for me to pick a card that was virtually worthless. I take the lead and make a short narrative.
‘It’s a four of diamonds. Not sure there’s much chance of winning based on that card, but thanks anyway’. I found it quite hard to say that. I was the loser, plain as day.
‘It’s OK’, the rule maker replied. ‘The games not finished yet. We’ve still got to let the lady at the back pick a card.’

The rule maker made his way back to the other end of the hall and initiated the very same process to the woman who was in the play off. He spread the cards out in a fan like shape in front of her. She couldn’t wait to pull her card. She drew one out and almost threw it back at the rule maker with only a cursory glance, knowing that to beat the four of Diamonds was a no brainer.
I had to admit, it had been epic. Never in my wildest dreams would a game of village Bingo have come to this. I’d come down to the village hall this evening without the foggiest idea of how to play Bingo and had reached the final two. It was an unbelievable result.

As quickly as jabbing the card towards the rule maker the woman pulled back her card and studied the face of it.
I could see from my angle that things just took a turn in a surprising way, whatever that was. A perceptible change in the general aura back there.
In his position of authority the guy in charge had to be sure that what he just witnessed and obviously heard the woman to say, was indeed what he had just heard. I hadn’t heard the talk from back there. That would have been too much to ask. Hard of hearing left people like me relying on others to fill in the gaps.
The guy in charge had to fulfil his obligations as a rule maker and thankfully was as aware as the caller that if in a position such as he was in then he was equally obliged to make himself heard. Because the woman at the back hadn’t made herself heard, he then had to repeat her admission in an extra loud voice so that we could understand what was going on back there. ‘A two of Hearts? A loud and bold statement. An utterly embarrassing and frank statement that put the woman right back into her box.
‘OK, it’s a two of Hearts everybody. By now the woman from the back had relinquished her hold of the card and had handed it over to the rule maker as though it was toxic to hold. It was a shame that in the heat of the moment she had allowed her mind to ignore the possibility that there was two chances of winning.
‘It’s a two of hearts’ said the rule maker.
‘A two of hearts!’ repeated the woman. She had to repeat it several times for her mind to acknowledge the reality of it.
‘A two of Hearts’ repeated the rule maker. ‘The guy at the front wins.’

Village hall entertainment can be better than given credit for. It’s not just knitting and yoga. We’ve had some of the best.
Sadly, it doesn’t happen anymore. The desire to keep it going relies on folk who have the determination to run these events. They’re not people employed by large firms, they’re ordinary village people.