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Minus Taffy, Jocky & peRV, us Almonds assembled in dribs & drabs at Patchway Sports & Social Club for our final disgrace of the season and to draw to a close our bottom-hogging dwelling of Division 2.
With Craptain not joining us for the first half of the game because of the lure of the cricket nets, and allegedly needing somebody to rely on & knowing he has that with Compact, our Vice Craptain held the fort. Promising Reg he’d do his best with the tools he had to work with, & for want of a better idea, he took the uninspired decision to play the only 2 women there together first, Mrs Ducklas having been dragged out to save us from the humiliation of having to concede our last game – not that it would have affected our position or anything, but it would have been a more bitter pill to swallow than mere annihilation!
Some of you may be forgiven for not understanding that Mrs D was perfectly in control of her game and meticulously planned the ‘duck & score’ repetition in order to make the board look aesthetically pleasing. Lodge got it, he said he could tell without looking it was women playing because of the pattern on the board, which is probably down to Chantelle’s influence – although she could work on obliterating the patronising tone from his voice.
Amidst a variety of advice thrown at her from all directions, which would have made a pirouetting ballet dancer dizzy, Mrs D displayed fortitude as well as the same diversity with the trajectories of the balls she threw. There is no doubt she would have scored more than 7 had she not been subjected to such great volumes of barracking, and is also apparently why she doesn’t win the averages.
Without peRV there to watch & therefore make it worthwhile squashing his hopes like a bug in the averages challenge by thrashing him with my unleashed prowess, I struggled to secure the desired number of pins to wipe the smirk off his mush... Obviously, I didn’t want to go raving mad and make Mrs Ducklas look bad by scoring the 30+ I had planned, but I didn’t make allowances either for being sucked into her charismatic master plan for the scoreboard and found myself staring at the beautiful light and reflecting her pattern in my own scoring, hitting 17 instead of at least a quarter century. I am happy to finish the season at the headiest height I have ever attained in the averages, but I can’t pretend it wouldn’t have been an absolute pleasure to beat the ornery oick. I suppose there is always the chance that Conspiracy Pete hasn’t added all my scores to the sheet?
Us Lovely Ladies had only left the Almonds 4 pins behind Proinn, dropping a neat 2 pins apiece! aRCe & Orical were given the challenge of getting us back on track in the right direction and ably did so by scoring 22 & 14 respectively. aRCe pulled his score of 15 at 5th up out of middling to respectable by bowing out with a 7 to make the 22, and whilst Orical would have welcomed the same exit, he was doomed to the unluckiest 6 ups ever, when no matter how well he threw a ball it was only ever going to take 1 pin out at a time, earning himself a new moniker – The Sniper! This steady scoring pulled us 5 pins back and put us 1 in front and there was a bit of a half hearted attempt at “well played the pair”, which the conquering heroes had to initiate themselves!
By now Chuckle 1 had arrived with the hamstrung-out Barnesy, who was less than pleased when VC chalked MiniDisc’s & his own name up on the board as 3rd pair. His reassurance that this wasn’t an oversight but in hope of someone else turning up to play & Sue being rested did nothing to improve things, but I want to learn me that look she turned on him!! She was a bit too easily mollified with a hug and an insincere “you know I don’t mean it” for my liking, but even that display by Compact had more to do with Mrs D giving him the evil eye as well methinks! MiniDisc, classily attired in camouflage crops that sadly didn’t disguise the fact they were falling off & his pants were showing, got into double figures with a 10, whilst Compact picked up the slack (I don’t mean Georgie Boy’s crops this time) and scored 24 – and he got top score with that??????!
A further 2 pins pulled on the game, to put us an exciting 3 in front, a second WPTP, and Craptain took up the reins of his team and put the Young Guns on together. Direct competition with one another didn’t provoke an explosion of testosterone and they ambled to the finish with Lodge banking 18 & Turk 14. I thought that I heard Compact say this meant they’d finished the season dead even, but I guess Conspiracy Pete’s doctored averages information will confirm that one!
We now faced being 5 pins in arrears, the Young Guns dropping 8. Craptain put Barnesy on as his own partner. Now Barnesy, having witnessed the Proinn with a walking stick being handed his balls by an able assistant, demanded the same treatment. Orical offered to rub the balls between his thighs for her if it meant she would hit something, and following that she got up quite eagerly for her first up I thought. When just being handed the balls and only the promise of rubbing them to a shine didn’t elicit the best in Barnesy, The Boys resorted to a more graphic display of encouragement, each ball being painstakingly passed from crotch to crotch and energetically polished until they were warm & glossy – and the skittle balls didn't turn out so bad either! - so enthusiastic were their endeavours that cries of “hurry up Sue, because the next one’s coming and nothing’s going to stop it” were soon resounding around the alley. I think The Boys were quite disappointed that she didn’t want them to repeat this process on her next up – rather crushingly she told them not to bother because it didn’t help one little bit.
What with that and Compact saying something about one of his nuts having a strange form to it, it was difficult to keep up with what was actually happening with the game. Despite Sparky’s helpful suggestion of putting some reggae on to encourage her with her skittles, Barnesy’s best efforts could only produce her a 5, and in the background of all the shenanigans our Craptain scored 15. The laughing stopped for a few brief minutes as we absorbed the fact we were now 33 down on the game, but the moment we had been building towards all evening was now upon us and everything else became insignificant as we waited with bated breath for the ‘Clash of the Titans’ to finish off the season.
The strange lump in Compact’s nuts had been laid out on the table for everyone to poke and prod at, resulting in a pile of nut dust. Lest Chuckle 1 be tempted to smoke it following his recent trip, it was generally agreed not to show it to him and therefore give him any unfair advantage over Sparky, who thought he was at Bingo for a minute with his cry of “eyes down for a full house” as he prepared for battle against his fellow Titan.
There was a collective hush as Sparky sauntered onto the alley, took up his Greek God stance and with ball in hand gave it a good few swivels before releasing it. The disappointment was palpable when it failed to hit anything until Sparky reassured us he’d only dished up a loosener to start – phew! A couple more looseners followed and I got to increase my skittling knowledge further still when I learned that 3 looseners on the trot equals a duck! With the scent of early blood for the Bowers’ game filling his nostrils, unless he got to the nut dust when no-one was looking, C1 quickly took advantage and put himself 5 pins up on Sparky with his first up.
2nd up it looked like Sparky was taking things a bit too far with the whole loosening up thing as he put his first 2 balls straight through. Knowing he only needed to beat Chuckle by 1 to win the averages, with the hopes of his peers on his shoulders for an 11th hour upset and Chuckle chuckling “he just doesn’t want it, does he?”, it couldn’t have been easy to hold his nerve, but his 3rd ball hit true to take out 3 pins. Chuckle chalked up a 7 for his 2nd, and it was starting to look like a bloodbath!
Claiming that up until now he’d just been playing with our emotions and trying to make it more interesting for us, Sparky started to fizz and produced a 6 on his 3rd up. There was talk of him leaving it a bit late, but Sparky brushed that aside with the words that Chuckle only had to get a duck to leave him with 3 to chase. When Chuckle added a further 6 to his score on his 3rd up it was looking increasingly likely that we’d be praying for spares on Sparky’s behalf!
Strolling onto the alley for the 4th up, Sparky started laying the foundations of blame at Craptain’s door for playing him so late in the game, pointing out that he’d normally be at home in bed at this juncture of the evening’s proceedings. That thought obviously cheered him up and he took out 5 pins, standing back to see what damage Chuckle would inflict next and contemplating what damage he would like to inflict ON Chuckle, resorting to savage threats of taking Pete outside to ‘snap his knuckles’. I wasn’t sure whether Chuckle kept his hands in his pockets after that to protect them from Sparky’s malice, or to disguise his nerves – perhaps he just enjoyed the vibration caused from the shaking! Sparky’s interest in the Clash re-ignited & his little eyes lit up as if plugged into a socket when Chuckle put first one, and then a second ball straight through on his 4th up – and he was positively bursting with glee as the 3rd ball met the same fate.
With a chance to catch up as his prophecy had nearly come to pass – 4 to chase, not 3! – we were all routing for Sparky to capitalise on Chuckle’s MISS-fortune, but he only took out 4 on his 5th up. Barely able to contain himself as Chuckle again put the 1st and 2nd balls straight through, Sparky hollered “get the polish out She, I’m coming home with the cup!”, and, either taken by surprise by this outburst or with his own wife’s eagerness to be rid of the shield at long last, Chuckle made it 6 in a row and put the 3rd ball straight through – delighting his team-mates who had already named this particular occurrence, 2 ducks in a row, a ‘Cluster Ducker’.
For those amongst you who have an interest in these things – and let’s be honest, who doesn’t welcome the opportunity to remind Compact of his ‘finest’ hour? I, for one, will never forget the day when... – getting 6 ducks in a row will henceforth be known as a ‘Flocker Ducker’.
Chuckle bore this set back well, telling us all that he meant to do it to make things more interesting for the voyeurs!, and it couldn’t have been closer as they went into the last up all even at 18. Sparky took up his Greek God stance for the last time this season, sharing with us the fact that his heart was palpitating when we’d all assumed it was his knees knocking, and we were all willing him to go out on a big splash. He took 4 to score a total of 22, cutting things a bit fine!, but with the pressure all on Chuckle to hit wood – he didn’t look remotely pressured as he took time out to stroke and kiss ‘his’ shield before taking up his place on the alley for his last up.
It was all a bit of an anti-climax after that: Chuckle’s nerve held and he took out 5 pins, just enough to put him 1 up on Sparky and to snatch victory in the averages after all; Barnesy, who had been busy wiping all the dust off the shield so as not to lose face with Sheila when Sparky took it home, tried hard to hide her disappointment at having her drawers full of Pete’s shield for another year; Sparky was going to ring his accountant to get the figures checked out properly and left quickly to avoid any chance of seeing Chuckle re-presented with the lost Shield; Orical was mesmerised by actually seeing the Averages Shield, likening it to seeing a Unicorn for the first time; aRCe, Compact & Craptain turned their attention to other possible movements amongst the averages following the evenings scores; the Young Guns, reduced to the Magnificent 3!, had long gone; and Mrs Ducklas looked happier than we could have been forgiven for thinking at the prospect of going home at last with Mr Ducklas!
Before that could happen, and having taken time out to congratulate Proinn on their 40 pin victory over us, there was one last duty for Craptain to perform. With the opening line of his lukewarm speech reducing the crowd to laughter – “It gives me SOME pleasure...” – Craptain presented Chuckle with his shield, some photos were taken by the attending paparazzi and we all left to face a 4 month sojourn from the heady excitement of Bristol North West League skittles.
The last word has to be about Compact – who else? – who tormented Craptain til the last, pontificating about how at our AGM we will have to decide what to do about the second half of our games, having mastered control of the first half with him in charge. One of his finest attributes, that modesty and humbleness he has... but life would be dull without him!
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