Still reading? I salute you.
Now, onto the last part of the week. To round things off, we were all taken to ‘Roller Bowl’, a bowling alley in the region of Inverness. I was excited: I USED to be half decent at bowling, however through years of negect my skills appear to have taken a slight deviation to the worse. At least to the gutter. Which is where, almost invariably, the ball ended up.
Seriously, these things are fixed. I realise now that I was probably only ever good at bowling due to the bumpers. However, we were playing a ‘proper’ game and the bumpers would have taken some of the fun out of it. For the other people. Time and time again, my ball went diagonally into the gutter on the left. After correcting my angle due to a helpful tip from a friend, the ball invariably went diagonally into the gutter on the right. There was only three or four occasions that the ball actually went near the pins, on one occasion I somehow managed to score a half strike *cough*fluke*cough* and this made me happy.
However, I had not forseen that Debbie would be so damned good at bowling. She got almost all the pins down every time, scoring several strikes. Many people marvelled at this. I was simply dumbfounded as to how she could persuade the ball to arrive at the other end of the lane and I couldn’t. My other opponents were similarly good compared to me. I admit now, publically, that I am a hopeless bowler.
The game ended eventually, with the highest score of our group (Debbie) being something like 104 and the lowest score (Mine) being about 36. We all shuffled over to the alley’s impressive arcade. I say impressive, but I never got to actually play any of the games as I was all out of money by this stage. Needless to say, they were taking advantage of us. The best game there, After Burner Climax, cost THREE POUNDS to play. For one game. Only one of us actually went on it, but his experience was slightly limited when someone pressed the seat movement’s emergency stop button. I think he should demand a refund.
Well, that’s all there is to say about Roller Bowl. Go there if you’re up in Inverness sometime.
-James
© James Plant, 2008 All trademarks acknowledged.
