With half the team AWOL due to it being a Friday & school holidays, Craptain was scratching for a team against Greystoke Sports – it didn’t help that Hammer rubbed salt in by inflicting insults from Antigua, unsettling what was left of the team. With Barnesy & Chuckles in cahoots with Hammer, the Welsh Boyos I know not where & MiniDisk & Barnesy Junior out on a jolly, Craptain drafted in EN&T – aka The Mrs - & SavvyDisk to make up our numbers.

A keen peRV – keen to get away that is – was put on first pair with Lodge, who also didn’t hang about for the chalk to settle once he’d thrown his last. Apart from a dcuk a-piece, Lodge getting his out of the way at the start, but peRV waiting for his 3^rd up, they kept up a steady stream of hits to finish on 19 & 21 respectively, leaving us only 10 in arrears. Unconcerned, Craptain then put AndyMan & Wiggle on – the former also keen to go on early, but in his case so that he could get down to the serious business of concentrating on drinking without having to worry about seeing as well apparently! Wiggle was soon fervently wishing she hadn’t had to go on at all… AndyMan scored himself a 21 this week, having to suffer the ubiquitous dcuk in the line up somewhere. Wiggle got a dcuk to start, missing the front pin by only a squidgely bit, then tried some one-ball scoring by following up with two 3s & missing quarters left, right & - well that’s all really. I don’t really want to talk about the following three ups… or do I mean three oops? Perhaps I was concentrating too much on not throwing balls down the gully after Hammer very kindly put the idea into my head; perhaps the dead silence whilst I played was too unnerving; perhaps my Greystoke mentor trying to ‘help’ me throw straight sabotaged my chances: I wish. I was just crap & accept that I lost us the game due to my inopportune amnesia of all things skittlish. I’m surprised with me only scoring 6 we didn’t drop more than 7 pins, but I guess you have to thank the skittling Gods for small mercies – 17 down Craptain put EN&T & Compact on. Cath made a good start, but the dreaded dcuks were lying in wait & after suffering 3 of the evil little *s she managed to find her way to the front pin again to pull her score up to a decent 15. Compact looked like he was going to blister his way through without dcuking it, but he too succumbed twice & had to settle for a Sweet 16 & knowing that he’d helped hold the Greystokes even on the game, which meant that no further damage was incurred as we sucked lemons at half time. With Craptain already deciding it was a game of two halves, he opened up the hopefully better half with Orical & aRCe. Orical wasn’t to escape the dcuks either, still managing to score 16 despite enduring 2, whilst aRCe was the only Almond to have a clean slate – no dcuks & top billing with his 24! Unfortunately 3 pins were dropped at this point to leave us 20 down as SavvyDisk & Sparky took up this week’s position as warm up act to the ‘ankers. There probably wasn’t one person in the room who didn’t let out a groan of sympathy as SavvyDisk couldn’t quite manage to escape the curse of the dcuk on her last up: having served up 3 6 3 5 4, we all held our breath as we waited for her to steal top spot from aRCe, but it wasn’t to be – she nonetheless put most of the rest of the team to shame with her 21, actually pulling back 15 pins at the same time! Sparky, who had the perfect opportunity to capitalise on Hammer & Chuckles absence, struggled to find any inspiration & could only look on in resignation as his 17 was recorded on the board. Still, our 5^th pair gave the Almonds something to shout about, & with a little bit of atmosphere finally infusing the game we waited to see if our ‘ankers could pull off a win for us – not an impossibility as we were now only 4 pins down on the game. Turk, who was ‘anker by default after having to run out to move his car – which was blocking someone in – just as he was due to play 5^th pair with SavvyDisk & had to be replaced by our other JS, was coping with the pressure quite well up until his 5^th up when dcuk fever got to him too. He recovered well to take some wood with his last up, & our 3^rd Sweet 16 was recorded on the board, but he no doubt had to endure some well deserved gloating from Sophie that she’d managed to thrash him on the alley!! Craptain, under the circumstances, put in a good Captain’s innings to finish on 22, with the game up for grabs almost to the last ball. His own dcuk falling on his 4^th up when he was already on 14 resulted in Compact warning everyone to mind their chairs, which dragged a rueful smile from Craptain & focused him into scoring off his last 2 ups. Despite getting a well played the pair for pulling at least 1 pin back, it was a desiccated pack of grounded Almonds that left Southmead Community Association, having lost a game by 3 pins that we felt we should have won. Still, it wasn’t all doom & gloom: EN&T won a tenner on the football draw, & The Boys enjoyed feeling superior about being at skittles rather than in Antigua & having to text in for an update! Our penultimate game of the season is on Tuesday 15/4 at home against the Legion Rams, when Compact will be ‘in charge’!

< Prev		Next >

[ Back ]

Fabulous Spanish Apartment Rental Now Available at www.reeg.co.uk/spain