Bingone
Once I’d put my cultural snobbery behind me, it was OK, and in fact I was actually looking forward to it. In fact, it’s not every day that you get to go to the bingo. I’d only ever once been before – when we went on holiday to Pontins at Prestatyn, otherwise known as the Las Vegas of north Wales, or maybe not.
Anyway, this was a school fund-raising bingo and there were 200+ people in the hall. It was all in a good cause, so I bought 4 cards: four cards, 
each with 3 lines of numbers, each line containing 5 numbers, the numbers ranging from 1 to 90. Arranging the cards next to each other, that’s 12 lines of 5 numbers: 60 numbers to check each time a number is called. In any language, that’s a lot of numbers. When it’s not in your mother tongue, with the numbers are coming thick and fast, when you are checking to see whether you have got 5 numbers across one of the 12 lines, or 15 numbers on one of the 4 cards, it gets pretty stressful, especially when there’s a home cinema up for grabs.
The French use the decimal system just as we do; in fact, I think they invented it. If this is the case, why don’t they respect it? For example, why does the number “eighty” translate literally as “four-twenties”, or, even worse, “ninety-seven” translate as “four-twenty-seventeen”? The number “seventy-seven” is actually pronounced, “sixty seventeen”. Just do it in groups of ten as your decimal system prescribes! When I’m scanning a large set of numbers and I hear the caller say, “sixty…”, I’m off and looking for a number between sixty and sixty nine – it’s logical right?, except that it is invariably followed by “…eighteen”, so I have to go back and start scanning for a seven at the beginning of the number.
The first game begins with having to find 5 numbers on the same line. With 200 people, each with several cards, many arrive very close at the same time and the tension is palpable. Mistakes can be fatal – bars of soap and magazine subscriptions can be won and lost on a slow reading of your card. However, once someone has won the prize for a single line, the game continues, and this time you need to get all the numbers on one card to win, the prizes getting bigger, the tension greater.
As the game went on and numbers ran out, as I (geek check: raster) scanned my 12 lines of numbers faster and faster, going back to the beginning time and again, realising that the number that I thought began with a six, began with a seven, my head was turning. I became dizzy: I started making mistakes. The 8s started doing somersaults across the cards. A 6 and an 8 look pretty much the same. But then, “Bingo!” Thank god, somebody’s won. The bubble of tension bursts and it’s off to the bar…
Then comes the twist: anti-Bingo. In this version you stand up and, using only one of your cards, you sit down if one of the numbers on your card is called out: Last man/woman/child standing is the winner. It’s the big one, “Le gros lot”: the home-cinema I so crave is up-for-grabs. I must have it. It’s a game where being unsuccessful is the key to success – I can only win!
At the beginning, it’s chaos, children are stood on chairs and tables, waving cards in the air, but as more numbers are called, people groan and sit down. I’m still there, my 8s are still cart-wheeling across the card, but have not yet been called out. I look around and I am in the last 20 or so. Bloody hell. I am a known figure “L’anglais est toujours debout!”. Shit, I could win this. I look up at the big card up on the stage where the numbers are marked off as they are called. There are only 5 of us left now. “Huit!”, another one sits down. Four of us left now. All eyes are on us. I scan the numbers that have been called and check them against my card. Wait a minute, what’s this? Seventy five (sixty-fifteen) is on my card and is marked up on the board as having been called. Triple check. “Vingt-sept!”. Another one sits down. Three of us left now. Bugger, how am I going to get out of this one? No escaping the fact that I should have been sat down ages ago and now everyone thinks that l’anglais is up for the big prize. No time for cleverly backing-out here, so I quickly came up with two strategies:
- Stick it out, then feign ignorance and shrug my shoulders when they point out that sixty-fifteen was actually called. The disadvantage of this strategy being that I end up actually looking like a fool, although, being a foreigner, I could probably get away with it with some theatrical forehead slapping.
- Wait until the next number comes up and pretend that it’s on my card, hoping that it’s not the same for everyone else and therefore have to go through some kind of tie-break.
Although not always successful, I’ve spent my life trying not to look a fool, so strategy 2 seemed the best on quick reflection. The next number came up, and again it wasn’t one of mine, but luckily only one of the other 3 remaining bingoists sat down with me. As I sat down, I realised that I had to quickly hide my card from my neighbours so that they couldn’t actually see that the number that I was pretending was on my card wasn’t actually there – to pretend to lose like that, to most, would have seemed fairly strange behaviour (unless, like me, you skirt with shyness).
So, palms sweating, I managed to get out of a potentially embarrassing situation. I didn’t think that an evening at the Bingo would be such an adrenaline rush and would leave me with a feeling of guilt (don’t ask me why, but I always carry a feeling of guilt around with me).
All this because the French don’t count in groups of ten properly. And because I don’t pay attention. And because I really wanted that home cinema.
Ha ha, only you would find yourself in a situation where you had to think of a clever way to gracefully lose! Good thinking though, I’m not sure what I’d have done to minimise the impact – saying something like “oh dear, I appear to have made a mistake…” would draw too much attention. Calm under pressure!