Spending an idle holiday Monday as any sensible person would, I was reading Stonch's beer blog and saw his post about playing pub skittles. He's included a short and sensible video explanation. Pub skittles is a old pub game that depends on a small ball hanging by a line from a stick and a swinging action with which the ball is sent into nine pins. The whole set up can sit on a table three foot by three foot square.
That is a good game. But the game I generally want to try is not pub skittle. That game is London Skittles. London Skittles is like pub skittles that has met Alice in Wonderland after drinking the drink that makes things ten times bigger. I mentioned it in the first Pub Games Project post and even got an invite to play the game from one of the guys who plays it at the one English pub still playing it. Given that I live an ocean away, even though it is described in the excellent Pub Games Of England by Timothy Finn, the best I have been able to come up with is the video below from a UK TV show with a demonstration of the game:
Comments
Stonch - August 21, 2007 5:34 AM
Alan, I too was invited to come and play a game of London Skittles, by the guys who still play it at the Freemason's Arms in Hampstead, North London. I'll endeavour to take them up on their offer ASAP and report back...
Perhaps I'll be able to get Wee Rossie to come with me and host another instructional video. You'll note he's adopted a North American accent in place of his normal Edinburgh Scots - such are the indignities of catering for the US market. Ask Ricky Gervais - "Dwight Shute"? I ask you, is it really necessary to give someone a comedy name in a comedy that's meant to be realistic?
Alan - August 21, 2007 8:11 AM
As someone with a genetic disposition to supporting the Morton, I think I would have to prefer the commentary in an inexplicably thick Clyde valley accent. I am thinking Kilmarnock, circa 1895.
Stonch - August 21, 2007 4:53 PM
Just for you I'll get him to do it that way. He's a versatile wee laddie.
Beer Dispensers - November 28, 2007 12:38 PM
I think that you may have to remove that video as it doesn't exist anymore, however, I do know the game.
Alan - November 28, 2007 1:08 PM
Both videos work fine for me.
John of Argghhh! - January 7, 2008 6:06 PM
Alan - there's still plenty of room in the Dungeon of Argghhh! to install a skittles alley... and more importantly, it would be in the area that is plumbed, so the bar can be there too.
We may be ignorant savages south of your border, but we're not completely daft.
Reely... 8^ )
Terry - February 4, 2008 12:16 PM
Works again now, maybe a bit of downtime at the time of viewing for me.