Friday, November 25, 2005

Easily Persuaded

"Rhys!", Guy exclaimed, "There's a new casino in town! Fancy going?"

Like the poor, easily-persuaded son of a gun that I am, I accepted.

On the first day of the new licencing laws, we instead decided to take advantage of the old gambling laws, and headed to the Grosvenor Casino in Liverpool.

Previously my only experience of a casino has been the one hidden away in town, which any drunken rabble can go to on a night out and spend a load of money. I've never hugely liked it, as it was dark, underground and messy (now even more so, as it's undergoing a refit at the moment).

Once we registered on the system by a guy called Norman (which took FOREVER, he would be the type of person which would benefit when I rule the world), who insisted on calling me "Mr. Wayne". No relation to John or Bruce. It's a new one, I tell you.

Once we finally entered the casino, I immediately changed my cash to chips and sat down for some blackjack.

Something was a little odd about this casino. It actually felt like a casino. With the exception of Norman on the desk, everybody else was quite chatty, which made us feel like James Bond in Monte Carlo, instead of two students and an ex student with no sense.

The dealer, who sounded like he came to this country after the fall of communism, seemed to enjoy our presence at his table, largely due to me, Guy and Zandr laughing, joking and generally making tits of ourself. Imploring people on our table to "take one for the team", using the word "checkmate" for blackjack and innuendo's such as "I could use a BJ around about now", entwined with laughter and saying "Hit Me Baby One More Time" when we wanted a card.

Of course, if you're my mother or Alyson, you're probably more worried about how much money I spent. Well, below you'll see a picture, which I got back, and then changed into chips.

Yay! A £25 chip! I also had two £5 chips and two £2 chips! Barry Bolshevic (not his name) wanted to give me five £5 chips (I had a stack of 27 £1 chips at one point, as I sticked - by and large - to minimum bet blackjack), I told my sob story of never having held a denomination chip above £5, so I wanted to hold one legitmately for a few minutes. Touched by my moving account, he gave me a £25 chip. I was chuffed to bits.

I was still £3 down for the night (got back £37 from the £40 I went out with), but still chuffed to bits.