When I stepped into my room, I was just as awe-struck as when I opened the door at the Wynn. There were sliding doors leading into the bathroom which was equipped with more towels than I could feasibly stuff into a bag, had I wanted to that is! The bed was massive and on first inspection seemed to be very comfortable. The view? Well, lets just say 2 out of 3 isn’t too bad.

I left down my stuff and headed down to the spacious ballroom in the Golden Nugget which was home to around 80 tables for the entire Summer. It may have been home to 80 tables but it was, a mere 10 minutes before the tournament was due to start, home to just 30-odd poker players. I started to get the feeling that the organisers at the Golden Nugget may have been just a tad ambitious in their plans. It was around this time that I started to get this feeling in my stomach which told me that I might end up regretting paying in advance. On the other hand, it could have been the 30c Hotdog that I scoffed on the way over to the hotel beginning to work its magic on my digestive juices.

When I sat down to my table, it was just me and the dealer, a 50 something woman who had been dealing cards all her life but as it transpired over the next few hours, didn’t have a clue about the game! More players started to arrive eventually but it was all too long after the awkward conversation between me and the dealer had dried up. I had a taxi-driver from Boston to my left who kept telling me that he was Irish and a guy who provided private security in Afghanistan to my right. At least that’s what he told me, although his playing style did match that of someone who’d be crazy enough to go out there!

I did nothing but throw away chips for the first 2 levels and soon found myself down to half a starting stack before I’d even got my first drink! The cocktail waitress was hobbling around the room somewhere but had not yet ventured over our way. I decided to make a stand with the 3-4 suited and got myself into pretty ugly spot where I was effectively bluffing a fish with what was still the coveted 4 high on the turn. Thankfully he folded a flush draw to the second barrel which rather worryingly was enough to put me all-in. Patience Adam, Patience.

Just after the break, I found myself chopping a pot against crusty old player that had been moved to the table about an hour previously. He uncharacteristically bet out on the ace-nine-two flop with a flush draw which I quickly called and he then moved in on the turn which paired the nine. I thought for a while before calling with A-6, no heart. I figured the nine counter-feits a lot of his ace-rag limping range and I’m still ahead of flushdraws which I thought he has a lot. If he happened to have Ace-Ten or Ace-Jack then I could always call for the King or Queen for the chop or just quietly sit there and think about what how hungry I was, I hadn’t decided yet. He has A-4 so we end up chopping. I watch him sweat buckets over the next few minutes as he ponders how I read his soul after he probably made the most aggressive move of his 50 odd year poker career.

I’d like to post up more detailed hand histories about how I steam rolled the field but my participation in this tournament wasn’t to reward me with the measly $4k first prize but instead saw me leave in 18th or something stupid like that. I had dwindled to a pretty short stack before finding AK and shoving over a pensioners open. He makes the standard call with AQ and binks a Queen on the flop. I leave the room of the opinion that I should never play a tournament like that again lest I run the risk of turning into the crusty players that populate it. I figure I’m here to enjoy myself, not watch arthritic hands struggle to maneuver chips for hours and end.

I head straight to the cash table and buying for $200 on a table that’s just about to start. In my very first hand I get JJ and open to $10 on the button. We see a ten high rainbow flop. The big blind checks, I bet $20, he makes it $70 almost immediately. I get sick a little in the back of my throat because it’s not really a situation you want to find yourself in the very first hand against an unknown. He’s only playing $160 though so with half his stack in, he’s most likely calling with all his top pairs. I don’t want to flat call and then fold to an overcard on the turn and I sure as hell don’t want to fold an overpair in a live game. I shove, he calls and mucks what he says was King-Ten. He reloads and donates another $200 to me in the very next hand when he shoves 9-7 on a K-2-5 flop into my 22. He then reloads for $500 and the entire table starts to lick their lips. I didn’t see another dime of his money over the next hour, although the rest of the table benefited from his presence.

I later saw him walk down Fremont Street with a bottle of Miller Lite. Crying. I lol’d.

The next day I went down to the pool and lazed around there for the day. The swimming pool at the Golden Nugget is amazing. The only thing that lets it down is the droves of overweight middle Americans that infest the place. If they could transplant the place into the middle of the Strip, it would probably be one of the best pools in the world! Now I’m no David Hasselhoff but I felt like a Spartan warrior amongst these folk, which definitely had a few plus points, gently massaging my ego with every step I took to and from the poolside bar.

When I went back to my room, I thought I might need some ESPN to keep me entertained but I was wrong. I needed only turn down my TV and listen to the couple arguing in the adjoining room. “Stop giving that slut money!”, “Your daughter needs money!”, “I’m not giving her a dime so long as she’s stripping!”. I was having great fun listening to them but the entertainment value was wearing thin come 3am when they were still going at it. I woke up the next morning to hear them go at it once more, only this time by having horrible, horrible sex. Obviously they settled their differences. Or he was having his way with her. I didn’t pay it much thought however because I was hungry and going to hit the “Best Buffet Downtown” with a vengeance! It was pretty shit, unfortunately .

With it being my last day downtown, I wanted to do something worthwhile but invariably ended back down at the pool. I had figured out what way the sun moves over the pool the previous day so I went down early and reserved the recliner that gets the sun first. In continuing my run of good fortune since I arrived in Vegas, a ridiculously hot woman sat down in the chair beside me. With every other seat in the place unoccupied, I’d like to say she was attracted to the milk bottle figure that I cast on the chair but that would be me lying – she just wanted the only other seat with sun on it.

As the drinks flowed, we got talking. I had only planned on staying down there for about an hour because I wasn’t wearing any sun lotion. After all too short a period of time, I started burning up. But I didn’t want to interupt the conversation about the beauty of the Colorado River to run up to my room. Play through the pain, that’s always been my motto. Somebody must have heard my silent cries for help, as one of those overweight middle American couples that I was complaining about earlier walked past and offered me their Factor 75(!!!!!) spray. “This will last me until Christmas”, I joked, but on the inside I was so relieved. It wasn’t to be enough unfortunately and you know that you’re going to have bad sunburn when you start peeling while sitting out in it! Before my sunny friend to my right left, we had a ride. Of the waterslide.

I’m not that lucky!

I spent the rest of my time Downtown confined to my room applying litres of Aloe Vera gel onto my chest in a losing battle against the burn. I took a break from massaging the green gunk into myself to ring for some room service. They seemed completely unperturbed by my order of steak at 5am. That’s why I love Vegas. Once I packed up my things, I checked out and got the hell out of dodge and back to Barry and Simon who I had hoped were living it up back on the Strip. They did have a spare room all this time after all.

With my mobility hampered, I shuffled my way the short distance over to the poker room and sat in once more to the 1/3 game. It seems to be occupied with a lot of locals and I soon found out why – for every hour you play, you get $2 cashback AND $2 towards comps such as buffets. I cashed out up $120 or so about an hour later without having to show many of my hands. At this rate, Vegas was paying for itself!

I found myself moving pretty quickly to the cage to cashout, so I figured I had recovered from the gluttony of early morning. We wandered over to the massive Fashion Show Mall which is across the road from where we’re staying and found a Tix4Tonight outlet which is a place that sells half-price tickets to shows in Vegas. It was recommended that we go to the Playboy Club which, as it disappointingly transpired, is a Comedy Club. Fortunately for us, it was pretty funny and its headliner for the night Tommy Davidson had me in stitches for most of the show. Or maybe it was the vodka. Ahhh, the vodka.

If you had tickets to the comedy show, you were able to get into the actual Playboy nightclub in the Palms hotel for free. I was told this was good because they ordinarily have a mile long queue full of prostitutes and perverts and charge $40 for the privilege. Everybody gets to the club in an elevator, something that my local club Ruby’s should look into, which is very cool. The 54th floor is the Playboy Club but if the Playboy bunnies dealing blackjack on tables surrounding the dancefloor is too much, you can always take the escalator up to the roof where they have another nightclub. Drink was pretty steep with Heineken (something they consider a “premium beer”) coming in at $9 a bottle. I’d come this far though, so I wasn’t going to give in to those prices.

The more Heineken I guzzled, the more attractive the blackjack tables looked. They were $25 minimum tables so I took out $250 and tried my luck. Bear in mind that I’ve probably played blackjack twice in my life and you kind of get an idea of where this was destined to go. I was actually up a bit for the first 2 minutes but was chasing for the next 30. I was just amazed I was hanging on for so long. When I got down to my last $25, my drink that I had ordered an eternity a go was delivered to me. I hit blackjack for the first time since I sat down and leave the chips there. The dealer busts and I slug the drink and take the $150, happy, relieved and surprised to finish only a tonne down. Thank You Jesus.

With the lads gone home after calling it an early night, I continued to awkwardly stumble and slur my way around the place for an hour or so before realising I was only going around in circles. The only way out of the club was the lift, so I had to wait about 20 minutes before I reached the top of the queue – yes, a queue to LEAVE. The queue for taxis was about 4 times as long outside but I walked on a bit and managed to flag one down just as he was coming into the place. All seemed well and good until he pulled into what I now know to be the Gold Coast casino. He told me to wait in the car and that he’d be back in a minute. I started to get pretty suspicious, even in my state, so I waited until he’d gone out of sight before following him in.

As in get into the casino, I see him sprinting like a gazelle through the casino floor. I check all my pockets and still have my wallet, passport and camera. I’m really confused now. Is he the worst scammer ever? I wait about for a few minutes and there’s no sign of him. His car is still abandoned outside the casino with both his and my doors’ wide open. I walk up to the valet and say “My, you’ve got pretty eyes”. Wait, I hope I didn’t say that. She didn’t flinch. I proceeded with caution. “I’m new here, do drivers usually abandon their car mid-fare?”. She shook her head, looking as confused as I did. I explained the story as best as any rambling drunken idiot could and she just told me that I was lucky. She found me a new taxi, apologised to me and sent me on my way. My new driver suggested that maybe he saw someone that owed him money or someone that he owed money to. As we pulled into the Wynn, I didn’t really care why he ran off, just that I had my money and anal virginity intact. Thank you Jesus.

After such a weird experience, I couldn’t possibly head to bed. I didn’t even know what time it was. I found my way to the poker room and sat straight into a game. I only bought in for $200 because I only wanted to splash around. The Captain and gingers continued to flow so splash around I did. I struggle to remember any hands but must have played out of my skin to get up to $1k at one point. I remember a lot of aggression and plenty of overbet shoves that always seemed to get through. Then, after coming back from the toilet for the umpteenth time, I see Barry at one of the tables. “Have you not slept either?” I ask him. “No man, it’s noon”. I spend the next 5 minutes trying to find my table, thinking it had moved. It didn’t. I get involved in one more pot and lose $200 when my opponent makes a great call and manages to fade my 20 million outs on the turn and river. I decide to call it a night, or day rather, and rack up my chips. $750. Thank You Jesus.

I wake up in my bed and go to get dressed but save myself the trouble when I look at my phone and see that it’s midnight. I have about 7 texts from the lads which reads like a recap of the day; “Want to see a show tonight?”, “Bought you tickets to the show”, “We have to be there for 7″, “Leaving for the show”, “Back from the show”. I’m absolutely famished so I order some room service. Barry comes into the room to have a chat and help me try remember the night without much success. Just as he’s leaving, room service arrives. They even bring a table with them! Before I sink my teeth into one of the nicest steaks I’ve ever had, my server points out his name in case I want to make a nice comment about him. His name? Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus.

I tried really hard to fall asleep on the plane but the harder I tried the more sober I got and the more sober I got, the more I was reminded that we were flying in a tin can over an ocean. The very fact that my grandmother made a point of asking whether or not I got seasick the day before I left didn’t do anything to improve my deluded and paranoid state. I needed sleep. Sleep was not what I got. Instead, I had the one genius in the plane who decided to keep his seat reclined for the entire journey sat right in front of me. And so began a to-and-fro battle of him trying to push back his chair and me using using every limb available to me to make his flight hell. At least this little battle took my mind off the prospect of crashing into the ocean and getting seasick on a life raft.

When we landed, we breezed through customs after racially profiling the queues and figuring that the queue with the least amount of ethnic minority looking types would be moving faster. When we got outside for the first time we were hit with this blast of heat. 32 Degrees – at midnight! We scurried over to the first taxi that we saw before we ran the risk of being reduced to nothing but a puddle of sweat on the tarmac. The short ride from the airport to the Strip was complete sensory rape with bright lights and gigantic screens sticking out from everywhere! Barry was so mesmerised by it all that he almost left the driver a tip of a few grand after leaving his bag on the seat. Luckily he was one of the loudest men I had ever heard and his screams from his car were enough to summon us back.

After doing a bit of jiggling, our check-in attendant was able to have us in rooms right opposite each other on the 50th floor. Once the lift (sorry, elevator) doors closed, we felt like we were about to be shot into space. It has better acceleration than a Ferrari and made all our ears pop in the 5 seconds it took to whisk us up. It was probably a bad time for Barry to remember that he’s claustrophobic but I think he’ll soon learn not to be if it saves him a walk of 50 flights of stairs everyday! Our rooms are, simply put, amazing. I kind of wish that I didn’t research them so much because then I would have been blown away but nevertheless they exceeded all of my expectations. After over 24 hours of constant travelling, you would have thought that I’d have liked nothing more than to collapse into my bed. Not without checking out the poker tables first!

As soon as I reached the gaming floor, I was overwhelmed with sounds and lights. Thankfully, the poker room is situated away from the casino floor in it’s own area. The lowest the games play are 1/3 NL so I bought in for €300. The players range from brutal to okay. There’s a lot of people playing a standard ABC game which you can extract money (albeit slowly) from them as they don’t seem to be able to adjust very well to being raised. For the first hour or so, I was playing that standard ABC game while I got to know the table. My first big hand came when I called an open of $12 with 6h7h on the button and 4 of us saw a flop of 8h9hTc. Action came thick and fast as the SB bet out and a player in middle position pushed for 120 odd. I insta-snap call and the sb folds. His hand? QhJh. Drawing to one out on a flop like that is pretty sickening.

I’m left to lick my wounds and contemplate whether bed was a good idea after all. I grind away for another hour or two, without getting so much as a pair or “picture cards”. I manage to get back to even before I get dealt 66 (Poker God’s must have heard me). The guy who I doubled up earlier raises and I call from the big blind. We see a flop of 6-7-5, two hearts. I bet out $25 and he calls. The turn is a 9 and I check call a bet. The river is the Ace of hearts and thankfully it’s checked behind by him. He mucks when he sees my set but again I come away from the hand hating that I another big hand isn’t fully rewarded.

I leave $82 dollars up but believe if I ran that bit better or even as to be expected then I could have had a big Wynn.

Vegas baby!

There’s 3 of us going, so we fall somewhere in between “The Hangover” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. We’ve managed to get a fantastic deal in the Wynn Hotel, it’s almost too good to be true that I fear that we’ll be put up in the janitors closets for the whole 2 weeks we’ll be there. Something tells me that even the janitors closets would be more spacious than an average hotel room in Ireland, however. Wait, did I say 2 weeks? Yes, yes I did. In the films people struggle to survive a weekend without a tiger ending up in the bathroom or tripping out on a merry-go-round so I did wonder when booking the holiday was 2 weeks about a week too long. I soon stopped wondering when I saw it only cost us $100 dollars for an extra week. Naturally I didn’t even consider how much it would cost us to live there for that extra week!

With the holiday booked, the slavery began. I’ve been working any available hour in work and almost got into the routine of instinctively putting on my uniform on days off in anticipation of “the call”. My Failte Ireland voice evolved into something a soprano would be proud of as I served our guests with a perpetual smile on my face in the hope of getting extra tips. I started to worry when I began using that voice outside of work, much to the amusement of anyone around me who thought I was trying to sound like Casper.

I head off on Thursday and intend on updating this as often and honestly as I can (read as whenever I’m hungover in bed). I know that What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas but I hope that the copious amounts of free alcohol will be enough protection to stop me from sharing details that I probably shouldn’t be sharing. We’ll only look at our photos once too.

Oh, I almost forgot – One time poker Gods!!!!!11

One year a go, almost to this day, I realised that I was in a lot of trouble. I had been working too much, drinking too much and studying far too little. I was clutching onto and referring back to any positive comment made about me, no matter how unrealistic it was in a desperate attempt to make myself, to trick myself, into thinking that everything was okay. It really wasn’t.

I failed college last year, pretty spectacularly too. I’ve always tried to live by the phrase “if you’re going to do anything, do it well” and I suppose in some twisted and demented way I interpreted my failure as being “done well”. My line of thinking, after I had tricked myself that is, was that if I was going to be paying €150 to repeat an exam, I may as well get value for my money and repeat a whole rake of them. At my current rate, it looks like I’m going to be getting value for money this year too!

Despite knowing that I was in trouble, I was more than happy to just strap myself in and enjoy the roller coaster ride that was my impressive fall from grace. At least it gave me plenty of content for this blog. Speaking of which, isn’t it funny how your brain twists and distorts things to appease you, God forbid you’d bruise my ego in any way, shape or form.

Sitting here and typing this is a struggle. It’s also infuriating knowing that I’m spending time writing this when I know full well that there’s a somewhat daunting assignment due. I’ll get around to it though. Eventually.

My excuse this week is that I had to help plan my parent’s escape from Spain after some inconsiderate Icelandic volcano decided to throw their plans into chaos. Hours spent refreshing the AerLingus home page in desperate search of available seats on flights paid off when I managed to get them onto a Monday flight as opposed to a Friday flight. I happily accepted all the thanks and praise as I left that assignment beside me gather another layer of (possibly volcanic) dust.

Well done Adam, you fool.

Last year, it wasn’t until the dying days of April until I first spotted (and ran away from) a wasp. Now, not even half way through the month, I already find myself walking (often running) around the house armed with whatever aerosol spray that is within arms reach. As nice as it is to see the sun shining at this time of the year, I really hate the idea of being paralysed with fear at the sight of every fly for the next 4 months.

Just yesterday I was innocently brushing my teeth when I noticed a wasp terrorising my windowsill. Within seconds it had negotiated its way into the bathroom and was now in the same room as me! I bolted out the door, leaving towels, toothpaste and hopefully the wasp in my wake. I didn’t want to be bullied into swallowing my toothpaste so I grabbed the first two cans that I saw. Armed with Boots Super Shoe Deodorant in one hand and Lynx Twist in the other, I slowly and methodically edged my way back towards that creaking and intimidating looking bathroom door.

I silently tried to push the door open so as not to give the wasp advance warning of what was going to happen. With the door slightly ajar, I sprayed both cans in the immediate vicinity thinking he might have been lying in wait for me. Having not heard a frenzy of buzzing, I concluded that he must have been biding his time elsewhere in the room. I started walking through the cloud of toxic aerosol fumes, struggling with every quivering breath not to start choking. I spotted something ugly moving above the shower, trying to get in through the overflow pipe into the attic. It was a big wasp. What if it was a queen wasp? I could not live in the house with the possibility of a wasps nest a mere 10ft above my head! I leant in towards the shower, as much as my petrified self would allow me to, raised the two cans, and sprayed with such determination to see that wasp drop to the floor.

It had other ideas.

It swooped into action and made a beeline for my face in an obvious attempt to kill me. I kept my trusty shoe deodorant trained on it and it aborted a few inches away from my face. My tiny bathroom was now home to a thick cloud of deodorants and it was increasingly difficult to breath. I turned, ran and slammed the door behind me and waited. The breeze from the open window started to open the door ever so slightly and I caught sight of my foe on the ground. I went in for a closer look. It was still alive. Recommence spraying.

Once again the wasp had other plans but this time flew straight past me and up towards the skylight and out of reach of my weapons. I ran downstairs and fumbled through one of the cabinets before I found Mr Sheen which I know to have a far better spraying distance than the two cans in my head (many years of over-dramatic wasp killing has thought me this). I tore back upstairs. He was gone!

He could still be out there. I didn’t sleep a wink last night as a result.

I really hate wasps.

When I got to my room on the Friday, I soon realised that its layout was butchered in half so that it could make the room beside it into a wonderful executive suite. As it transpired over the weekend, that suite housed the lovely Kara Scott, although she spent most of the weekend getting the lift up and down to the 4th floor, perhaps where one Brian Townsend was camped out? There were two other problems with my room, one was that the toilet was placed right in front of the hotel room door which ordinarily wouldn’t be an issue but I have this awful habit of leaving the toilet doors open while I’m in locked hotel rooms. Strange, I know, but on two of the mornings accommodation staff timed their entry perfectly to the moment where I was about to announce bombs away! The other problem was that the wheels on my bed were a bit too free moving and whenever I’d sit on the bed it’d fly about 6ft across the room. It definitely led to some disturbing alcohol induced nightmares of rolling down a hill and off a pier to my death. Explains how I managed to wake up for the start of play every morning anyway! With all my complaints though, my room wasn’t even one tenth as bad as the room I was lumped with in the enchanted and long forgotten halls of the Gleneagle back in October, as Sam will testify.

This year saw me being part of the biggest blogging team yet. I’m glad to report that most of them could keep up with the drinks. Sam was renowned for saying he was going to the toilet only to duck off to bed or do the loots at the cash tables, Darragh kind of filled in this role this time around and ironically was the only person to be late on one of the days, despite not drinking! Both Ed and Brian couldn’t get enough pints into them (much respect) and those moments the barmen started to leave the bar in single file every night were some of the lowest of the entire event. Was great to put some more faces to names although I think at this point about 90% of the faces stored in my brain belong to random poker players and some of the stuff that happened was comical beyond belief. I had a great laugh at the expense of some poor guy who slipped off the counter and collapsed into a mess on the ground. He proved he wasn’t a quitter by eventually getting up and digging into all the idle drinks that were on a table nearby!

Having distinctively said that I was shit at poker only last week, it was only natural for me to gravitate towards the cash tables at every available opportunity. On the first night I only ventured over so I could order some food. I ended up doubling up on my second hand when someone shoved blind for 200 and I snapped with the King-Ten in the blinds and held against Q2. I left after I finished my platter of incinerated onion rings and what looked to be sausages. On the second night, I threw away €80 within the first few minutes and kind of tilted myself. I called a raise with the JcTs in the SB and 4 of us see a flop of 8c5c9s. I check and the original raiser bets €30, he’s called in two spots and with action back to me, I decide that I didn’t call a raise preflop to fold to that board and ship for €120. I’m snapped in one spot and then the button agonises for a while before saying he’s priced in to call. I’m up against 9cTc and 4c7c and bing the 7 on the river for the wonderful treble up. Felt sorry for the guy who thought he was priced in only to be drawing pretty dead with what he thought was a big draw! I won a little on the 3rd night but left because of the ever-present fear of having both my chips and myself swallowed up by the giant American beside me.

Having finished in the green on all three nights, I’m now once again convinced that I’m absolutely brilliant at this game and would ask everyone to ignore that nonsense I rattled off a while back. It’s a shame though, I was almost out, only to be sucked back in to what I know to be a vicious circle once again in the dying moments!

As I posted on my Facebook, I’m already looking forward to bruising my hips in search of horrible coolers at future events and the late night craic in the bar every night!

It can’t just be me.

In fact, I know it’s not just me. I’ve invested (read as: pissed away) days into these games. In Mafia Wars I was a latecomer and was trying to play catch up on those trendy early adapters whose lives had already changed for the worse. The final nail in the coffin of my Gangsta’ career came when I stumbled in the door one night and found myself without any energy to complete Bank Jobs and the like. Out came the credit card. As a complete degenerate gambler (certainly when drunk anyway), I’m not unaccustomed to taking out the credit card at 4am and having a desperate punt on anything from the X-Factor – which I don’t watch – to 40 game accumulators across every sport on offer. I’ve never woken up feeling as guilty after losing money on ludicrous betting as I did after spending €70 on Gold Coins! I wouldn’t mind but the eventual effect it had on my character was akin to upgrading the engine in a Mini… that’s in a race against a F16 fighter jet. I vowed never to play a game on Facebook again and I admit that I briefly felt somewhat superior to those I could see in the libraries feverishly clicking away their lives because I had the good sense to break the addiction.

Then Cafe World came along.

I happen to work in the hospitality industry so I justified my first foray into the world of restaurant ownership as an investigation to see if it was “authentic”. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel for excuses! Much to my delight, the game was about as authentic as an autographed photo of Jesus. I had hoped for micro-management of costs and the freedom to create your own meals but instead I was given cartoon characters that flipped burgers on a moldy old stove every 5 minutes. There seemed to be nothing going for the game – which was good, given that I was desperately hoping that I wouldn’t get sucked into a world of misery for a second time. I was just about to abandon ship and return to normality when I spotted the leaderboard at the bottom of the screen. What followed was something that could only be described as the most peculiar time of my life as my online existence deteriorated into trying my utmost to try win what was to develop into a bitter feud between two restaurateurs.

There was no prize. Not even pride was on the line as I didn’t know the person I was entangled with that particularly well. For some reason the mere sight of a big number was enough to motivate us to plough hours and hours into slicing and dicing day in, day out. At some point, the process of roasting and toasting various meals was no longer fun. My restaurant started to look more like a factory than an eatery as I tried to make my formerly beloved creation more efficient in a desperate attempt to hold onto my lead. My moves were quickly matched. It can’t have been much fun for my competitor either given that I was starting to plan my “cooking” around my day of lectures and work. I’m ashamed to admit, but I will, that I was once asked to go into work because someone called in sick but I declined purely on the basis that my 6 Roast Beefs would be spoilt and I’d surrender my lead. It had to stop. For the love of God it HAD to stop!!

And then I got word. “I surrender” was the gist of it. I was skeptical though. I was only too aware of the possibility of being tricked into leaving my guard down and being left helpless as they rode off with the prize (which was what again?). It turns out that they weren’t that sick and twisted though (had they done that I would have been positively bouncing off the walls for weeks!). I could return to my normal life i.e. the one that didn’t involve logging into Facebook at every available opportunity to see if I could better utilise my fictitious cafe.

Never again.

Last Saturday confirmed all my suspicions. It’s 2:30am and the music has stopped, the lights are on and I’m as hungry as a size-zero model in a McDonalds for the first time in their life. I step outside the Forum and it’s raining cats and dogs. My fancy dress plan was initially going to be a crude attempt at my role model and idol, Captain Morgan. It didn’t work out that way though.

I had dug through the end of my wardrobe and eventually rustled up a Death costume from yesteryear. It was nothing to get excited about except for the hood that covered your entire face to create an air of mystery which admittedly granted me the freedom to dry hump (amongst other things to be fair) everyone in sight, all whilst remaining anonymous. Hoods are dangerous though.

Cats and Dogs are bouncing off my face and the only thing on my mind is a chicken burger freshly harvested by some Polish slave worker in Hill Billies. My friends are all creeping about outside the Forum, either catching up with old friends or going in for the kill on the haplessly unaware! I wanted no part of such debauchery though and instead opted to pull over my hood, put my head down and run into town where I could get all the breast I wanted. And then I could go get chicken.

I probably got a hundred meters before childhood memories suddenly came flooding back. See, when I was about 3 years old, and this is one of my earliest vivid memories, I was oddly environmentally aware. I had just finished a Loop The Loop ice-lolly and wanted to dispose of my lolly pop stick in the safest possible way so I broke away from the tight grip of my mother and ran down towards the nearest bin at the bottom of the street. Proud of completing my civic duty, I turned around to my mother to wave in delight. My mother got quite animated, obviously immensely proud of me. I woke up twenty minutes later.

As it turns out, the only thing between me and the bin was a lamp post.

In retrospect I think I got away quite lightly. I did kill a tooth though. How do you kill a tooth? Simple really. You run as fast as you can towards a bin, turn around and wave to your mother and then look back just in time to wrap yourself around an iron pole and knock yourself unconscious and sever the nerves in your gums.

Fast forward seventeen years and I’m once again hurtling towards a pole only this time I have a fucking black veil across my face which gives me the same eyesight as a 90 year old World War II veteran. I know the road though and manage to maneuver my way around a few obstacles. I think I’m in the clear and put the proverbial foot down. I notice three people eating chips outside the Ballybricken Chipper. It’s the last thing I notice.

“OOOOOOOOOOHH” is all I hear in chorus as I suddenly come to a stand still. Actually, a “stand still” is a very generous description of myself. A collapsed mess would be more apt. I pull the veil back over my head and see a pole standing over me. One of the avid chip eaters from across the road comes over to see if I’m okay while I can still hear the unmistakable ring that’s created when Pole meets Skull. Either that or they were going to rob me. I’m conscious though and they go back to their fish and chips.Bastards with their food. I send a text to my friend which simply read “fucking Pole. I’m in a bad way”. When he arrived, fists clenched, he demanded to know where the dirty foreigner had gone. I should have saved face and cut my losses by admitting that some greasy Pole started on me and attacked me for no reason. Instead I told him the truth. To summarise, it pretty much went like: “I’m a fucking retard who runs into iron poles for the craic”.

It’s then that I notice I’m bleeding. I’m so preoccupied with with wiping my face and trying to keep up with my friends (who I was ironically running away from in the first place) that I then walk into another pole. If I was trickling blood in the first place, I was pumping at industrial pace now! I was bungled into a taxi and sent home. It was probably for the best but I ended up not getting any food which was the reason why I turned into a unsighted Usain Bolt in the first place!

I took a photo of myself which kind of made me look like some kind of rape victim but thankfully I got a text the next morning that said I wasn’t raped but went into a Pole instead. Had I finished that double Morgan’s and Coke that was knocked out of my hand before I left, that text probably would have been appreciated much more.

It’s now Thursday and most of my face has healed. After about a day of washing, I managed to get rid of all the caked in blood to reveal the actual size of the cut. I probably could have done with a stitch or two but I think I can live with another scar. It’s not like I was going to become Nivea’s next big thing by brandishing the man tan on national TV! To compound the idea that a stitch would have come in handy is the fact that I now have blood trickling down my face again. Apparently random people love picking at random peoples scabs. They should just get their own to be fair.

I can’t get away from the fact that it’s another scar and another embarrassing story to go with it! The last scar I earned goes about halfway down my shin after I mistimed a jump between two walls while running and took a healthy chunk out of it. I swear that the next scar I get is going to be for something heroic like falling out of a tree after rescuing a blind cat. Knowing me I’ll probably just clock another pole – I’m an expert at this stage!

It looks very likely that I won’t get any more sleep before college and I probably have a day of vegetation and snapping out of sleep deprived trances to look forward to. I may not take in a single word that a lecturer says (not that I usually do) but I will go home tonight being awfully proud of myself because last year when I finished working in Dublin for the weekend, I didn’t go into college for a week – and that was to collect my grant cheque!

Of course I’ll only be proud of myself until I get home and have the smug grin melt from my face (a possible fun hallucination perhaps?) when it registers with me that I’m also working this evening. I may very well plough through it having demolished the proverbial wall a long time a go… or I’ll die trying. But first I’d better make this fucking bus lest I be stuck in the 90s for another few hours!!