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Oliver Cross: Darts at the Chemic Tavern and Eubie Blake
Woodhouse resident and YEP columnist Oliver Cross talks darts and Eubie Blake.
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Made point
On Easter Monday the Chemic Tavern in Woodhouse celebrated the Holy festival with a darts match.
Which seemed rather insensitive to me, but then I'm a non-religious person; religious people don't seem to notice any contradiction between reflecting on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ while watching Birmingham City v Plymouth Argyle, so I don't see why I should.
And anyway, this was no ordinary darts match. The landlady Ruth said afterwards that it was the finest sporting moment she had ever witnessed at the Chemic Tavern, easily beating the inaugural match of the Chemic Ladies Football team when nobody remembered to bring a football.
It all started when Neil, usually recognised as one of the more level-headed Chemic customers, although it's all rather marginal, issued, possibly as a result of what they call a bit of turn, an irresistible challenge.
He said that no woman could beat him at darts and if any woman did, he would buy all the women in the pub drinks for the whole night.
Then, instead of having himself sectioned and carted off, which would have been the sane thing to do, particularly given the drinking capacity of the Chemic ladies, he turned up on Monday evening to put his oche where his mouth was.
Ranged against Neil was a posse of four women darts players, each taking him on in four successive games of 501, and the agreement was that if any one of them beat him, he would not only open his wallet to a ruinous extent but also boil his head.
The atmosphere in the pub that night could have been cut with an atmosphere-cutting device. It was naked gender tension, the women quietly building a sense of sisterly solidarity while the men shouted 'Neee-ul, Neee-ul' or 'That was rubbish.'
The pub was so packed with excited people, plus cheesy confrontational music such as Eye of the Tiger, that the windows steamed up, which hasn't happened since the last World Cup.
To make it even more dramatic, the match wasn't decided until the very last throw.
This was because Neil, despite having his own darts-sharper – a sort of mini-grindstone which made him look so ruthless and professional that I would have conceded on the spot – couldn't manage a convincing victory.
The last game involved Gina and the girls placed great hopes on her because she was the only contestant with a plausible darts
nickname: 'The Thunder from Down Under'.
This was because Gina is from Australia and it rhymed, but she also had a kind of practiced way of preparing her throws and very accomplished post-throw reactions – forefingers upraised, smug smile on face – so that the she would have walked off with the style prize if darts wasn't such a tough game with no room for beauty.
As it was, Neil ('The Big Hitter') hung on to remain undefeated and then made a gracious victory statement praising his opponents. My ambition is to be magnanimous in victory, although I would settle for just being victorious.
I've learned a very good phrase from Lynne's daughter Holly: "In there like swimwear". Not sure what it means but I've already found it very useful and I'm sure it will spread.
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Secret of longevity and all that jazz
News just in: Apparently the ancient jazz man who on reaching the age of 100 said: "If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself" and whose name I couldn't track down for last week's column was Eubie Blake.
Eubie being a jazzy version of Hubert and the main thing spoiling a lovely story being that he apparently lived only to 96, although, since he started smoking when he was 10 and never stopped that was quite long enough.
Apparently he got off to a great start by writing the Charleston Rag when he was a teenager and my correspondent Andrew Wilson Lambeth thinks that his longevity was "perhaps an advertisement for the long-lived fruits of brief early success, " adding: "If true, the Troggs could still be going when the icecaps melt," which I find strangely comforting.
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Weather for Leeds
Tuesday 07 February 2012
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Temperature: -7 C to 2 C
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Sunny spells
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