Stan James and Germans

It´s good to be back

Back in Spain for a couple of weeks now and it’s great to be back. Of course one of the 1st things I did upon my return was to get smashed with my old work colleagues at Stan James and what fun that was. Keenlan, a new employee hit the nail on the head when we were discussing why it was and is such a great place to work, his view, “Anywhere where 80% of the staff still think their on holidays is a great place to work”, wise words from one so young.

I have not been wasting my time either; I have been watching plenty of big brother and sunbathing. I had forgotten that most of the beaches here are populated by Spanish minxtresses who sunbath topless and wear what can only be described as a piece of tooth floss for a bikini bottom no matter what size they are, it’s been emotional.

I also had the chance to watch an England legends team play Gibraltar but opted to watch Stan James footy team play in the semi final of the cup and see if Eddie could match my unsurpassed achievement of winning silverware as manager.
The chaps won a decent game on penalties and were through to the final which some bright spark decided would be held straight after the semis. Fortune though smiled on me when a load of Stan’s supporters turned up after watching the legends game which also coincided with the opening of a free bar.
The free bar distracted a few of us for most of the first half but put us in very good voice for the second. A J, a relic from our old team showed up and it took him all of 1 minute to start berating the opposition in a way only he can. He was a decent centre half but his real skill lay in winding up opposition players to the point where they swung for him and would be duly red carded though his tackling often meant his red card evened the sides up.
AJ needs little encouragement to take the piss but when he had a bet on Stan’s at 7-2 at 1-0 down combined with a free bar things were bound to get a little out of hand. Sadly his mickey taking wasn’t enough to pull the boys through but he gave us all a decent laugh. Eddie did a great job but one thing saddened me greatly. Stan’s only managed two red cards and 4 bookings, in my day we would only have been left with 4 penalty takers at the final whistle.


Some of SJ´s finest cope with pre shift nerves


The 3 way ´employee of the month award´ was celebrated in fine style, to win you need to get the highest rating on the inhouse breathalyser.

The job opportunity that took me to Barcelona last week now takes me for another meeting this time in Madrid where I hope to learn my fate, one can only survive on sympathy drinks and charity for so long, luckily two of my best mates have joined me and James (another top mate) over here for a weeks fun, life could be tougher I guess but I do need to find a job soon, so far the most serious offers of work i have been offered are as a smuggler or drug dealer, neither of which I think have great prospects.

As regular readers of the blog will know whilst on my travels in Australia I made it part of my mission to physiologically damage any Australian children i chanced upon with regards to sport. I once reduced a bunch of 4 year olds to tears in Perth with a magnificent century I made batting against them. It may have been the heat or the fact that my innings took about 4 hours before I declared but sadly I never got the chance to put into practise one of the finest wind ups committed against children I have ever heard (I think I heard it on Danny Bakers 606 show eons ago).
What happened was Danny asked people to phone in and relate bad things they had done concerning football but not to include, violence, abuse etc. One memorable phone call was from a chap who lived in Manchester and being a good Mancunian he was a Manchester City fan.
He reported that he and his mate were walking across his local park one Sunday where about 10 games of kiddie football were all going on when they came up with a plan so bold I never forgot it and was desperate to plagiarize it and use it in Australia.
Basically they stood on the sidelines of a game and whenever they spotted a really arrogant little fucker they whipped out there notepad and pen and wrote down the shirt number of the child in question. After doing this they would move onto the next pitch. Of course kid’s being kid’s curiosity got the better of them and the pair began getting pestered with questions like “What Ya doing mister?”
The punch line was they told these young arrogant’s that they were scouts for Manchester United and could the following players please turn up at Old Trafford tomorrow at 4pm. There then followed a roll call of every little git who never passed the ball to the crap kids or was berating team-mates for not being as good as them. Imagine their horror when turning up at Old Trafford, they must have been greeted by a confused security guard who wouldn’t have allowed them access.
I don’t have children so maybe it wouldn’t be as funny if I did but I thought the plan genius. In today’s England as soon as they had started taking kids names they would have been castrated by the parents but then again I suppose greed might override the initial emotion.
I think we should send an army of fake scouts over to Australia and ensure in twenty years time the Ashes never leaves England as the Australian youth would have become so despondent with cricket after having their hopes dashed by some strange sounding man who asked them to fly to the other side of Australia to attend some cricketing academy only to find out it never existed.

The chaps from Stan’s have been up to their usual tricks and a tale or 2 need writing down in case I ever forget them, one old one for now.
First up the tale of the telephonist Vinny, (he is so twisted he could hide behind a corkscrew), who also happens to be a handy darts player, so handy in fact he managed to qualify for a darts tournament which was being held in Gibraltar that featured all the worlds top players bar Phil Taylor. Stan’s priced the event up and Vinny was priced at 2500-1.
All bookmakers have big staking mugs who bet on everything and anything so it was no surprise for Vinny to receive a call one Saturday afternoon from one of the higher staking customers who wanted some prices on the darts event.
After betting a few thousand on 4 or 5 of the better known names our intrepid punter asked for 500 pounds on one Vinny R at 2500-1, a bet which would have paid out 1,250000 pounds and one Vinny needed to confirm with the darts trader.
The trader quizzically looked at Vinny when he was told about the request but told him to take it but also warned him he would be required to break his fingers if he somehow managed to reach the final. He still hadn’t twigged and it was only when he got back to his desk and picked up the phone to be greeted by hoots of laughter did he realise the call was made by the bloke sat behind him.


The World Series of Poker is upon us once again; I have many friends going over there to play so fingers crossed for them, if someone like the Camel, Badbeat or Dalzini wins an event I may be able to pay next months rent.



Tom the legend.

I have written many poker stories in the past but how I forgot to write the following before is beyond me. Trust me, it contains very little poker content at all and is more an anecdote from one of the players I used to play against regularly and hopefully goes some way to explaining that amongst all the bullshit most poker players speak, one or two have something to say which we can all learn from, this tale also makes one think about taking gambles when you don’t really need to.
Tom was (and hopefully still is) a large fellow who loved playing poker almost every night in Luton’s Grovesnor casino (AKA the shit hole). He wasn’t fussy what was being offered, tournament or cash game, limit, pot limit, no limit; stud Omaha or hold-em, why? Because Tom was a gambler. Now this story has nothing to do with a hand of poker he played more a gamble he took in a previous life, one in which he was married.
Tom and Mrs Tom owned and ran a little BnB which by accounts did a nice little trade especially with foreign visitors. On one joyous occasion the Toms had a German couple and their two young children staying with them for a long weekend and all was going swimmingly. Tom was a chatterbox and this couple seemed genuinely disappointed to be leaving after such a lovely stay in which apparently everyone had got on marvellously. In fact such was the camaraderie between the Germans and Tom that as they were packed and just getting into their car to leave he thought he would have a little crack at German to express his sorrow at their departure. “Itch mochte deine lecken” or something very similar he announced proudly, glad that his grasp of German hasn’t quite deserted him.
Apparently his fond farewell didn’t cause quite the reaction he had hoped for; rather he was left looking at 4 Germans who stood open mouthed silent having all gone quite pale. They drove off not saying another word and not even having the decency to wave goodbye. No Tom’s no fool and wondered if perhaps his German had not quite come out the right way so he actually took the trouble to contact Luton University and got put through to a German speaking student who agreed to translate his words for him. I for one would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the student’s interpretation to Tom was along the lines of “I want to lick your pussey”.
After the initial shock Tom suddenly realised he spoke no German at all and that it was a sentence uttered in his favourite scene from some filthy German porn film he had owned as a youth. Many people might interpret the morale of the story to be, don’t gamble unnecessarily but I think it’s simply a case of never try and be nice to Germans.


a scene from Tom´s favourite film