Pokety Poke Poke

We are in a state of high excitement in our house.  This is despite the fact that Tallulah has some interesting spots and I am giving her the benefit of the doubt and keeping her off school today.  This is despite the fact that I only managed about four hours sleep last night and Tallulah wet the bed in the middle of it and had a nightmare again, which when quizzed didn’t actually turn out to be a nightmare but a shriek that her bear had shot down the back of the bed.  Oh yes! It is even more exciting than these things.

Jason entered a poker tournament on Friday night.  It was an on-line one which meant he could lounge about in his special loungeing about pants and not have to put on proper trousers and a ridiculous baseball cap and hightail it into the night to a seedy poker den.  He likes seedy poker dens, but when it’s minus two and brass monkey’s balls are clanging all round town it is never too depressing to be forced to stay at home and lounge in your loungeing about pants.  Specially when it’s warm and I threw caution to the winds economically and bought chocolate hob nobs that were the real deal and not some cheapo remake.

The object of the exercise on Friday night was to win a place in a much more expensive tournament which took place last night.  The Friday game cost thirty quid to enter.  Winning gave you entry into a several hundred pound tournament.  After many tense hours muttering furiously about pocket kings and trip sevens and things I have no clue about and don’t really care to learn about either, he won a seat.  This was quite exciting.  He was quite excited.  He did a victory dance in his dancing pants.  All was well.  All manner of things were well.

Naturally, as the price of the buy in to a game increases it tends to weed out the rank amateurs because they can’t afford to lose that much.  It means the competition is much more stiff although the number of entrants will drop accordingly from the thousands to the hundreds.  Last night there was quite a lot at stake.  The winner got a free place in a tournament in Nassau in the Caribbean in January.  A five day tournament with a humongous pot of winnings which will also be televised.  Not only did they get the free place but they also got accommodation, food and spending money too.

Jason was fairly resigned to the fact that he had used up all his luck on Friday night.  He was mostly interested in being able to pit his wits against better players and improve his game.  It didn’t even start until eleven o’clock last night and we had already had a full day of excitement with the children and a broken night the night before so he was quite depressed about making it past the first hour.

He woke me up at quarter to six this morning to tell me he’d won and he was just off to work!

We are still reeling.  We haven’t told the children yet.  They were talking about it with Jason last night before they went to bed. He showed them photos of the hotel and its many swimming pools and palm trees and tropicalness.  He showed them giant bedrooms the size of our house and grinning waiters dressed like monkeys ready to serve your every need.  He told them that if he won he would take us all with him!  He had absolutely no hope at that point that he would win and he was just spinning dreams.  The children whole heartedly believed him and went to bed hysterical with excitement.  They thought daddy was being falsely modest when he said he wouldn’t win instead of being grimly realistic.  They think daddy is the poker king of Chicago and all quail before him.

It turns out that last night they were right, but we weren’t to know that.  Tallulah spent the morning ironing her bikini.  I have told them that he lost.  She has put on a black arm band but is still ironing her bikini in the hope that I might be wrong.  That child is very intuitive. 

The problem is that we are broke.  The problem is that we are having a scrooge mcbastard Christmas in which Jason and I have set a limit of twenty quid each for our Christmas gifts to each other.  The problem is that even with his winnings it will still cost us several thousand pounds to fly all five of us to the Caribbean and back for just five days and feed us all.  Add to that the fact that two of those days will be spent in transit and the rest hung over with jet lag and what do you have?  You have a giant ball ache which mummy will have to orchestrate while daddy tries to win our fortune, which is even more unlikely than him winning the bloody seat in the first place.  You have an outlay of thousands for probably no return and three days of screaming children in swimming pools probably getting Nassau belly.

Despite that Jason is still excited. I am still excited.  The children are still excited and they don’t even know why.

Much as I would like to spend January in the Caribbean and I really would, I am dreading it.  I feel it would be better if he pretended he were going somewhere for work and only told us if he won.  Then he could fly us out to the Caribbean and we could spend lots of time there instead of five days in holiday hell.  Then he could fly me back home and immediately chopper me over to the art galleries of London and take me on a late Christmas shopping spree.

Plus I don’t really know much about Nassau except that it will be full of bearded lunatic poker players in January sporting stupid head and eye wear and James Bond used to hang out there and blow things up in a casual and relaxed manner.

It is quite exciting though.