The New True Story Game

The game begins with someone choosing one of the following ten subjects and writing a true story on it based on direct personal experience. At the end of her/his story he/she updates the list by replacing the subject she/he has done with a new one of his/her choosing and then the next person follows on with a true story based on personal experience on one of the updated 10 subjects followed by a new list of 10. Ideally your story will include one hesitation, repetition or deviation but that isn't compulsory as we don't have buzzers. The winner will receive a box of two teeth from the 1950s.

Discotheque
Tortoise
Blouse
Colombia
Monopoly
Black holes
The Year 1995
Jet-ski
Bling
London Palladium

Jet Ski

I began backing racehorses when I was a teenager at school.

In those days, and for many years thereafter, there were no TV sets in bookies' shops: there weren't even any chairs or any carpets or any anything apart from the punters and the bookie - and a little box mounted high up on the wall known as "the blower". It was, in fact, far more than just a little box: it was a speaker through which the commentaries were delivered and, to the avid punter, it was the most marvellous little box in the world. It was a source of inestimable stimulation in what was otherwise the drabbest and most inhospitable of environments

It was the law of the land that made bookies' offices so inhospitable - and they were inhospitable. From the day that off-course betting became legal, the government was determined to make it as unpleasant a process as possible. I'm sure the frugality of those early bookies' shops succeeded in deterring many people from spending more time than was absolutely necessary in such an establishment but, to the avid racing fan, betting on horses was rather like sex: everything about it was pleasurable and, as the climax was approaching, it mattered not one jot where you were - all that mattered was the moment.

Many years later, bookies' offices became a lot more comfortable and the law even allowed people to see into the shops from the pavements outside. In those days I was happier than ever to spend hours every day chatting to fellow punters, watching horse races, betting when I saw a profitable opportunity and keeping my money in my pocket when I didn't.

During all those years when I was an avid punter, sometimes I'd have a proper job and sometimes I'd rely on my winnings to keep me one step ahead of the shoeshine (as Paul Simon might put it). I've always been a fan of Paul Simon.

When I did have a proper job, it was very common for me to pop into William Hill's on a Saturday morning and stake the equivalent of four months wages on my bets for the day. By 5 o'clock, if I collected the equivalent of five months wages, I'd had a good day. If I'd had a bad day, well . . . there was always tomorrow.

As every avid punter will confirm, the sporting life has its highs and its lows, and, for me, there were two high points one of which I will save for another day and the other of which was the day of the Epsom Oaks in 1991.

On the day, there were only nine runners: the favourite was 5 to 4, the eighth horse in the betting was 16 to 1 and the last horse in the betting was 50 to 1: the name of this "obvious no-hoper" was Jet Ski Lady.

I had a particular fancy for this horse but, when I told my friends at the bookies' that I was going to back her, their laughter could have been (and probably was) heard on the other side of town.

Undaunted, I placed my bet and the bookie took it from me in what he thought was the sure and certain knowledge that it was at that moment his irreclaimable personal property.

Soon after the stalls opened, Jet Ski Lady took a slight lead and 12 furlongs later as the winning post was approaching she hadn't relinquished it for a single solitary moment.

Who says you can't trust females? Certainly not me.

In the following video, she's in the front line - the jockey has blue sleeves and a white cap.

The new list is:

Discotheque
Tortoise
Blouse
Colombia
Monopoly
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium

Quote: Rood Eye @ 15th October 2019, 10:46 PM

Jet Ski

I began backing racehorses when I was a teenager at school.

In those days, and for many years thereafter, there were no TV sets in bookies' shops: there weren't even any chairs or any carpets or any anything apart from the punters and the bookie - and a little box mounted high up on the wall known as "the blower". It was, in fact, far more than just a little box: it was a speaker through which the commentaries were delivered and, to the avid punter, it was the most marvellous little box in the world. It was a source of inestimable stimulation in what was otherwise the drabbest and most inhospitable of environments

It was the law of the land that made bookies' offices so inhospitable - and they were inhospitable. From the day that off-course betting became legal, the government was determined to make it as unpleasant a process as possible. I'm sure the frugality of those early bookies' shops succeeded in deterring many people from spending more time than was absolutely necessary in such an establishment but, to the avid racing fan, betting on horses was rather like sex: everything about it was pleasurable and, as the climax was approaching, it mattered not one jot where you were - all that mattered was the moment.

Many years later, bookies' offices became a lot more comfortable and the law even allowed people to see into the shops from the pavements outside. In those days I was happier than ever to spend hours every day chatting to fellow punters, watching horse races, betting when I saw a profitable opportunity and keeping my money in my pocket when I didn't.

During all those years when I was an avid punter, sometimes I'd have a proper job and sometimes I'd rely on my winnings to keep me one step ahead of the shoeshine (as Paul Simon might put it). I've always been a fan of Paul Simon.

When I did have a proper job, it was very common for me to pop into William Hill's on a Saturday morning and stake the equivalent of four months wages on my bets for the day. By 5 o'clock, if I collected the equivalent of five months wages, I'd had a good day. If I'd had a bad day, well . . . there was always tomorrow.

As every avid punter will confirm, the sporting life has its highs and its lows, and, for me, there were two high points one of which I will save for another day and the other of which was the day of the Epsom Oaks in 1991.

On the day, there were only nine runners: the favourite was 5 to 4, the eighth horse in the betting was 16 to 1 and the last horse in the betting was 50 to 1: the name of this "obvious no-hoper" was Jet Ski Lady.

I had a particular fancy for this horse but, when I told my friends at the bookies' that I was going to back her, their laughter could have been (and probably was) heard on the other side of town.

Undaunted, I placed my bet and the bookie took it from me in what he thought was the sure and certain knowledge that it was at that moment his irreclaimable personal property.

Soon after the stalls opened, Jet Ski Lady took a slight lead and 12 furlongs later as the winning post was approaching she hadn't relinquished it for a single solitary moment.

Who says you can't trust females? Certainly not me.

In the following video, she's in the front line - the jockey has blue sleeves and a white cap.

The new list is:

Discotheque
Tortoise
Blouse
Colombia
Monopoly
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium

View original

Excellent - thank you very much.

Ne-ext!!!!!!

Monopoly

When I was at university a group of us got together for an evening of alcohol consumption, music and nibbles at a fellow student's house. During the evening the host mentioned they had Monopoly and if we all fancied a game. Everyone becomes more competitive when they've been drinking so of course we all agreed and sat down on the carpet to set up the board and get started. Everything was going swimmingly until someone knocked over a full glass of red wine over the board soaking a lot of Monopoly money and the carpet. It resulted in an abrupt end of the game because people started arguing over who caused the spillage. The girl who knocked over the glass was a bit deranged because she was blaming anyone but herself even though we all saw her knock the glass and the glass fall over.

Discotheque
Tortoise
Blouse
Colombia
Socks
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium

Quote: Definitely Tarby @ 16th October 2019, 12:01 AM

Monopoly

When I was at university a group of us got together for an evening of alcohol consumption, music and nibbles at a fellow student's house. During the evening the host mentioned they had Monopoly and if we all fancied a game. Everyone becomes more competitive when they've been drinking so of course we all agreed and sat down on the carpet to set up the board and get started. Everything was going swimmingly until someone knocked over a full glass of red wine over the board soaking a lot of Monopoly money and the carpet. It resulted in an abrupt end of the game because people started arguing over who caused the spillage. The girl who knocked over the glass was a bit deranged because she was blaming anyone but herself even though we all saw her knock the glass and the glass fall over.

Discotheque
Tortoise
Blouse
Colombia
Socks
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium

View original

This is already going much better than I expected.

Ne-ext (please).

I think it should be limited to about 100 words.

Living in Reading.I decided to watch my team Cardiff City play at Fulham.London was a new and exciting place and
it's many busy byways were a mystery.Congratulating myself on reaching my destination with ease,I was somewhat taken aback to discover that Fulham Broadway was not the station for Craven Cottage.I only realized this after following the crowd into Stamford Bridge.I must have look bemused because a few chaps ,after collapsing with laughter,befriended me and invited me to join them.I can't remember much about it but everyone was talking about the new wonder kid,Alan Hudson.
Anyway,after the match,apparently it was the custom for these chaps to visit a local disco,so I tagged along. It must have been a great night because I arrived back in Reading with no money and had to be helped out of the station because I couldn't find the exit.

Crumpets
Tortoise
Blouse
Colombia
Socks
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium

Sorry,the disco doesn't come into it much but it's the best I could do at at short notice.

Quote: john tregorran @ 16th October 2019, 1:21 AM

Living in Reading.I decided to watch my team Cardiff City play at Fulham.London was a new and exciting place and
it's many busy byways were a mystery.Congratulating myself on reaching my destination with ease,I was somewhat taken aback to discover that Fulham Broadway was not the station for Craven Cottage.I only realized this after following the crowd into Stamford Bridge.I must have look bemused because a few chaps ,after collapsing with laughter,befriended me and invited me to join them.I can't remember much about it but everyone was talking about the new wonder kid,Alan Hudson.
Anyway,after the match,apparently it was the custom for these chaps to visit a local disco,so I tagged along. It must have been a great night because I arrived back in Reading with no money and had to be helped out of the station because I couldn't find the exit.

Crumpets
Tortoise
Blouse
Colombia
Socks
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium

Sorry,the disco doesn't come into it much but it's the best I could do at at short notice.

View original

Repetitive betting practices, albeit leading to a positive outcome, a monopoly game which suddenly became so hesitant that it had to be abandoned, and a literal deviation from a football ground along with another which "forgot" to mention the disco specifically.

You have all done very well.

We must design a football monopoly game made out of wine resistant flanelette in which Craven Cottage sits next to Putney Bridge station and also an alpine version of Totopoly which we could perhaps entitle Ladies Day. .

1991 was the year when I went into work on the day of the Grand National just to catch up on a mountain of paperwork knowing I was working entirely for free. I put on two bets on the way in. Seagram to win and Garrison Savannah each way. They came in 1st and 2nd so it seemed like poetic justice. That I was paid for my efforts after all.

I had won with Aldaniti in 1981 and West Tip in 1986 and when I won again in 1991 it was obvious to me that I would become a Grand National millionaire in 1996, then in 2001 and 2006. In each case, I nearly went bankrupt. At which point I decided that the Grand National was too cruel and my moral preference was for bet free flat racing.

The odd thing was that with all three wins, I didn't, unusually for me then, watch the races but heard the outcomes just as they happened. In 1981, I was at Winston Churchill's home. Chartwell, and walked into the gift shop just as the radio there announced that Aldaniti had won. In 1986, I was at a wedding reception. The best man had an ear piece from a radio in his ear as he stood up to give the speech and he began by joking that the most important news of the day was that West Tip had won so we could all leave now. And in 1991, I did take in a radio to work but only remembered to switch it on just as the race was coming to an end with Seagram in front. There is a lesson there but I've never quite worked out what it is.

Anyhow, as the man says, no more than 10,000 words per story please.

Ne-ext!!!

In the spring of 1978 I was a long-haired 14-year-old, but wasn't everyone? I was in my first year of Spanish class, and our teacher announced that she would be taking willing participants to Colombia over Spring (Easter) Break. I managed to convince my parents to foot the bill for the trip, so soon I was off on my first flight since I was in diapers. We were headed to Medellin (home of Pablo Escobar and his cartel) but at the Miami airport they announced that Medellin was fogged in, so we had two choices: spend the night in a Miami hotel, or spend the night in a Bogota hotel. Bogota, here we come!

After a day in Bogota we flew into Medellin, and each student went to stay in a Colombian family's home. My hosts were apparently wealthy, so I had my own room in a very nice home. It would rain inside as we had breakfast near the atrium, and even the toddlers were served (by maids, of course) what I thought were cereal bowls filled with hot cocoa, but they were actually milky, sugary coffees. The servants were at my beck and call, always offering me a tasty arepa, or a bowl of soup floating with dozens of small, multicolored potatoes.

During the day we'd see the sights (the Botero museum, a meeting with the governor) and at night we'd head out to a disco. If there was a drinking age it was ignored, so I had many a rum & coke, along with shots of the national drink, aguardiente - an ouzo-like licorice-flavored liquor. One night my hosts forgot to pick me up, so I slept alone on a street corner for a couple of hours. Fun times!

We took a rickety bus to a village in the mountains to visit a cathedral for Easter. The roads were rocky and treacherous, and our bus had two flat tires on the way. This necessitated a stop at a remote service station, where the mechanic(?) patched the inner tube with molten rubber. A couple of Colombians sharing a Yamaha motorcycle with a green floral-printed seat stopped at the station and offered to give one of the high school girls a ride to the village. They wisely declined, because after we got back on the road we noticed a light-blue taxi reversing along the narrow mountain trail. While we were wondering what it was doing, we came across the motorcycle on the side of the road. The passenger was lying on the ground with blood pulsing out of a neat, round hole in his forehead. Our driver asked if he needed assistance, but the motorcycle's driver just laughed and said that he was drunk and had fallen off the bike.

We headed to the village and when we arrived the bus driver went straight to the police to report the injured man. I was nervous because it had clearly been a shooting, but the driver said that it was wisest to act stupid and report it, rather than risk the cartel's wrath by clamming up. We later learned that the motorcycle passenger had been found dead on the side of the mountain, along with a bicyclist who may have been a witness. It was a cartel hit, with a shooter in the cab and the motorcycle driver as an accomplice.

Cartels were just beginning to gain a foothold in Colombia, but the signs were everywhere. I asked one of the host family how much marijuana sold for in Medellin, and he asked me, "How much?" I said "an ounce" and he laughed at the tiny quantity, then told me that a pound sold on the street for $5. Uncut cocaine was $90 per ounce.

We had to pass through Customs in Miami, but the agent just waved me through without checking my bag. He pointed at a shirtless man with a leather vest and said that this was his 5th trip to/from Colombia in a month. The guy just smiled and said, "You'll never find anything on me, buddy."

I should have filled my suitcase with $90 per ounce coke.

Here's a scan of my moth-eaten passport to verify my tale:

Crumpets
Tortoise
Blouse
Beer
Socks
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium

Crumpets
I was at a gathering at someone's house once, no really, and the host said 'Fancy some crumpet?' I said not 'arf or something similar nodding to some nice looking birds in the house and he put four crumpets under the grill and said, good so do I. Nice crumpets they were though, had them with sugar on top.

Tortoise
Blouse
Beer
Socks
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium
3 in 1 oil

Does anybody read these?

Quote: Chappers @ 16th October 2019, 5:40 PM

Does anybody read these?

View original

Yes.

I understand this thread has already been recommissioned for a second and a third series!

On BBC4, no doubt!

What a great couple of stories.

DaButt - yours reads like the beginning of an award winning trilogy. So latin was the feeling I sensed in its opening paragraphs that I could almost taste the oranges and I started to brush away the imaginary cicadas buzzing in my ears. The darker turn was most unexpected. Could I humbly suggest that a decision on your part to try to trace the very fortunate young lady, as she then was, would make for a splendid volume two which if written correctly could exceed 900 pages? And well done too for the clever deviation which I think we all spotted, didn't we. Yes that's right. Everyone wasn't a long haired 14 year old in 1978. For example, I wasn't. I was 15 in 1978 and had hair that was neither short nor long.

Kipper's Crumpets. I also liked this one. It would make for an excellent novelette if expanded by about 50,000 words. Two mentions of the word "nice". Nice looking birds and nice crumpets. Great use of repetition there. And the Alan Fluff Freeman reference which may have been lost on very young viewers brought back nice memories of the pop charts too.

New rule:

For the next couple of days, the word abadabadoo on this thread shall mean ne-ext.

Abadabadoo...............

Tortoise
Blouse
Beer
Socks
Black holes
The Year 1995
The one that got away
Bling
London Palladium
3 in 1 oil

Abadabadoo.