Chapter 2:
Early Day/Influences:
So to recount from Chapter 1, I grew up watching my father drink and gamble ferociously and was always surrounded by gamblers in a haze of smoke in our house or down his local pub.
My earliest recollection of actually gambling myself (if you can call it that) was probably when I was in school, maybe aged 13-14.
We used to play this game called "penny up the wall" for change, sweets and drinks. I was pretty good at that game, so was this kid called Arlo, he was my nemesis.
Eventually one day I broke Arlo's jaw over a "penny up the wall dispute" and he returned the favor by breaking my nose. Still we became best of friends in the end after the two week school suspension period was over.
Arlo was an expert shoplifter and taught me all the tricks of the trade while snogging all the girls that I fancied in the meantime.
Still I didn't begrudge him because business was business and Arlo was a boss.
In fact I would go so far as to say that 90% of my WWF Videos/Flex Mags/ Gameboy games came courtesy of "Arlo Wealth Redistribution Enterprises" albeit at substantially discount prices.
The kid was a genius.
Those were the day's off course when if you didn't have a "Chipee or Naf Naf" Puffa jacket you were considered a nobody. Arlo had those things.
I was a nobody.
Still we would have fun doing battle during breaks playing penny up the wall, buying Donner Kebabs at lunch, fighting over who was next on the Streefighter Arcade machine as well as discussing the latest shenanigans/dramas of the WWF, while simultaneously planning and orchestrating the different forms of pain we would be inflicting upon the rival school kids of William Ellis School, a despised bunch and scum of the earth.
The next stage of my graduation process in the school of gambling (the birth point) and where it all properly began was playing Pool in the...
"Ye Olde Swiss Cottage" Pub & Pool Hall.
Ahh "the Swiss", what a place, what characters, those were the days.
In Chapter 3 I will introduce you to another man who greatly influenced the course of my life.
Ladies and gentleman I give you the legend that was "Chinese Danny"!
....TBC