Sunday 11 January 2009

Let's...play...darts!


I've been fairly industrious today once again with accomplishments to this point including going for a run, making breakfast, booking a family trip back to Northern Ireland and setting the ball rolling to sort out accommodation for Wee John and myself for our rugby weekend in Edinburgh in March.

The Whites have also been to the supermarket which was notable for one thing - Jamie had his first go at riding in one of the sit-up trolleys as opposed to those with the baby seat. He looked much happier and I would love to show you proof but I forgot my camera (it was bound to happen some time).

But back to Wee John, it was almost exactly a week ago that he headed off back to Wales after a few difficult days helping me look after the patients.

Most of our plans had to be abandoned but one did survive, albeit only very briefly: we had a game of darts.

John and I share a lot of interests, many of them both trivial and silly (it comes with being a boy) and one of these is watching darts on TV. Like most people of our age, we well remember "The Craft Cockney" Eric Bristow, Jocky Wilson, John Lowe and the other darts legends gracing our screens in the 1980s and early 1990s. Like snooker, darts was a big deal - evidenced, for example, by the success of Bullseye every Sunday teatime on ITV.

The sport then appeared to die away. That was until Sky Sports got their hands on it. The breakaway Professional Darts Corporation was formed to include most of the top players, lots of new televised tournaments were scheduled and the hype machine was put into overdrive.

Player nicknames are now mandatory as are personalised theme tunes as they walk to the stage, the matches are now held in huge indoor arenas and shouting and cheering are encouraged rather than frowned upon. In short, it's all got very silly and a whole lot of fun - making it very attractive to John and I.

I'm sorry to report that John "Quick Flight" Fulton defeated Barry "He's Sh*te" White by three legs to two. The picture above shows Quick Flight admiring my double 12 to win leg four.

I intend to do a lot of practicing before his next visit when I confidently predict he will take a hell of a beating - I'm planning to put the dart board up even higher.

No comments:

Post a Comment