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Compact hasn’t had the right hump for quite some time, but he may well have felt one coming on after the Almonds failed to blossom under his care Tuesday, even though he threw a load of manure around.
There were quite a few grumbles about being back on our home alley, particularly when the team from Britannia made it look like a piece of piss to play on it and most of us struggled to get double figures. We did well to lose by only 16… although of course, the whole idea is to win!! The Welsh Boyos were put on 1st pair: Compact was to admit later that this was a mistake, both being about as useful as a chocolate teapot, but it obviously seemed like a good idea at the time. Jocky’s defence of their performance was admirable – not only were they laying down a challenge to spur their team-mates into blistering action, whilst considerately not trying to make peRV look bad after last week, but they were also sacrificing their opportunity to shine by working it off of Compact’s highly glossed balls for us. Barnesy didn’t help them any, taking over the “Kiss of Death” role from Compact – who was suffering from a croaky voice & conserving his energies for making bad choices – by offering positive encouragement that was anything but. Taffy scored 6, Jocky 11, which left us 25 down and counting. Wiggle & peRV were offered the opportunity to see what they could do next, and whilst it wasn’t pretty, they did only drop 1 further pin. The combination of hand cream and shiny balls proved lethal for Wiggle, who couldn’t get a decent enough grip to work up a really good result. But she scored almost as many as the Welsh Boyos combined, so 14 wasn’t so bad. peRV should have tried harder to redeem himself after last week: it was only a lucky strike on his last up that produced his decent score of 27. His fellow Almonds thought he’d be better off swinging his balls behind his back like he used to in the old days, which always used to make the ladies gasp… but he wasn’t caving into pressure or requests, and after a miss with his 1st ball and the lucky hit with the 2nd, which took 8 out, he cleaned up to bow out on a 9 and a smile. Smug git. 26 down, Orical & aRCe stepped up to the line. I don’t think Orical was really taking the game seriously, describing his numerous bad balls as spectacular misses (unless of course I’ve remembered it in the wrong context and he meant he had a spectacular Mrs?), and announcing the balls were slipping out of his hands just before he picked them up… he even took time out to rip the piss out of Taffy, whose mobile phone resembled a Star Trek communication device, claiming he hoped to be beamed back to Bradley Stoke at any minute. After he only scored 11, he wasn’t the only one. aRCe kept his concentration going, despite his Loved One’s efforts to break it by phoning him whilst he was strutting his stuff, but even his 26 wasn’t enough to halt our descent and we now found ourselves 42 down at half time. Keeping ourselves awake with musings over where Craptain might be – taking an evening class for motivating people, taking an evening class in how to be on time, playing for another team – we now had Compact & Barnesy Junior doing some damage. In answer to BJ’s question “how many pins do we have to be down before we’d give in and put Barnesy on”, having dragged him out to play because we ‘didn’t have enough players’, it’s more than 42 & when backed into a corner. Compact quietly got on with scoring 17 & keeping out of Craptain’s way, whilst BJ did slightly better with 21 – he claimed his game was off because he’d spent so much time at the gym over the past few days and his muscles were tired, trying to inspire sympathy & admiration no doubt, but instead he was asked if that was because they had a new vending machine put in! With no one quite understanding why peRV found it necessary to grovel to the Craptain, when he finally deigned to show up, in a Fagin-esque fashion when he’d already played, we now had Hammer & Sparky on the alley displaying their prowess. Hammer was answering some trivia questions about the Rovers – it is claimed he has a photographic memory for such things, only his lens cover is glued on – but otherwise let his skittles speak for themselves. It was quite quiet. How the hell did he get 22 out of the crap he bowled? He never gets any 30s, never gets top score, aims for the quarter and hits nothing, and by his own admission throws 2 really bad balls for every 1 lucky one. Sparky on the other hand was just marvellous, taking the hat trick of a tick in the 30+ column with 33, another for top score, and a stroke of Pussy as well. I believe Craptain is pairing Sparky with Hammer, not to punish him, but in the hopes that some of his expertise will rub off on Hammer, who boasts about having the full 6-pack when it comes to skittles, but doesn’t have the plastic thing to hold it together. From 43 down, we were now only 17 behind Britannia and hoping for great things from our ‘ankers. Craptain led the way, with Chuckle 1 up his rear. Any last dregs of hope for a win were thrown away by a) Craptain dealing with his demons head on, targeting his nemesis – the left quarter – despite his troops trying to tell him what was the point if he couldn’t hit it: if at first you don’t succeed, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it!! However, just to prove everyone wrong, he stuck at it, refusing to score as many pins as he could in favour of stubbornness, and was rewarded on his last up to take his score to 22; and b) Chuckle being distracted by talk of whether it was a case of him not being bothered, or not knowing how, to put it in for Barnesy. He scored 19, which meant our ‘ankers pulled back 1 pin on the game – but obviously not enough to secure us a win. Now Barnesy, even though she didn’t get a game, was satisfied by Orical serving up piping hot refreshments, complete with cheesy snacks. Feeling emasculated by the obscure references to his inability to please Barnesy by putting it in right, Chuckle was muttering about being reduced to only using ‘it’ to stir the coffee with, which sparked Compact into taking us from smut to vulgarity in one easy bound… thank God I didn’t like coffee before, because after hearing about taking it with cream I’d be put right off. For anyone who still gives a damn, our next match is on our home alley again, Tuesday 16th January, against the Filton Wanderers.
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