Slots

Write about  slots  they said, (never mind who 'they ' are for now), and so here I am April Foolishly tapping away on my laptop in the jewel of the north, filing (filling?) my customary slot as the Saturday Blogger with words, pictures and poetry that I hope will be worthy of your attention, when most of mine is distracted, elsewhere.  

It's local derby day II. The mighty Blackpool are playing away at Preston North End, due to kick off in a couple of hours. We won at home earlier in the season and really need the points if we are to avoid one of three relegation slots waiting at the wrong end of the Championship table. To get demoted would be a disaster (obviously) and I'm hoping that April doesn't turn out to be the cruellest month (TS Eliot allusion #1) for the Seasiders.

Give us your money!

We may stay up, we might go down. There are odds, apparently. I'm not a gambling man and consequently don't bet. I don't get the psychology of it. Therefore it concerns me that the betting industry has muscled into the world of football big time and got a grip on the pockets of football fans in the last few years, (Bet Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Bet123, 365, 24x7, 888, Bet Fred, Tom, Dick and Hurry etc).

Betting companies have bought the naming rights to football stadia, they are the shirt sponsors of many leading league clubs, and a combination of the internet and mobile phone technology have allowed matchday betting to become pervasive. I'm told it's possible to bet on pretty much anything related to a game: results, half-time and full-time scores, the timing and number of goals, the scorers and assists, number of corners, penalties, red and yellow cards and on and on. I'm sure it opens up the way to corruption, cheating and fixing as well as making it far too easy for people who can ill afford it to lose significant amounts of money. It's insidious and personally I'd ban it from the game. I'd hate for football to become a sport predicated on betting in the way horse-racing so patently is. It ruins lives. It all seems a far remove from that more innocent era of the original football pools.

Of course I realise it's not just a sport-related phenomenon. A lot of the adverts I see on TV these days are for betting 'games', online bingo and casino plays. When a mobile phone can act as a bingo card or worse, a slot machine, then the one-armed bandits can virtually hold the world to ransom. I guess I have a puritan streak, but I'm shocked that this form of gambling can be marketed as entertainment and even as a social activity.

Just when you thought it was safe...

Talking of shocks and social activities, I couldn't resist sharing this image, purporting to be of The Scratcher (alias Margaret Thatcher) doing an impromptu DJing slot for Easter bank holidaymakers on Margate Sands (her dirty fingernails, connecting nothing with nothing, blah blah blah - TS Eliot allusion #2). Whoever it was said she can never be dead enough spoke for me. Infamous woman.

By the way, I'm not going in person to the match today. Last year I got hit in the side of the head by a coin thrown by Preston fans. Unacceptable behaviour. I'm planning to watch the game live on TV in Blackpool's Number 4 pub, hoping for the best while anticipating the worst. Come on you Pool. (I fear a 3-2 score line.)

To check out, here's my latest, an acid little poem:

Better Luck Next Time (Sucker)

Roll up! Roll up! So many plays to choose.

No punter is ever refused. So are you in?

Roll up! Roll up! What have you got to lose?

Your house, your job, your wife and kids,

your shirt, your soul, your life. You bet. We win.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Slots

I didn’t think there would be many meanings or origins for slots but I was surprised. Here are a few:

a) The oldest is from the 14th century means a bolt or bar that secures a door.

b) Slots means the tracks of an animal, from the same Old Norse root that gave us sleuth.

c) A third slot means castle, but it’s obsolete.

d) Again from the 14th century it was the slight depression or hollow running down the middle of the breast, especially the hollow at the base of the throat.

e) An Old French word that gave us slot was ‘esclot’, which meant literally ‘hoofprint of a horse.’

f) By the 15th century slot had begun to develop its more familiar modern sense, beginning with an elongated depression or hole in a piece of lumber wood where another piece is inserted. From there it is clear to see the way to it being used for the opening in a machine into which one places coins for (alleged) coffee, tea or soup.

Or even worse in the gambling industry where on line slots offer so much. When I put the word ‘slots’ into Google the first five pages were devoted to gambling. I gave up after that.

g) And then there is slot as in ‘a position in a list, hierarchy, system, or scheme; a position to be filled; a category; a place or division in a timetable, especially in broadcasting’. Apparently this meaning started being used quite recently, in the 1940s, which was a surprise.

This is the meaning that struck a chord for me as I have in the past been responsible for creating lists, mainly for poetry events, and thus having to give some thought to positions on those lists and who would fill them.

For instance, there was a recent World Poetry Day event (which was fantastic) in which poets from Preston collaborated with the University’s Confucius Institute. There were poets from all over the world reading. There were 30 of them. Each to be allocated a five minute slot. A balance on languages needed to be achieved as well as some other considerations such as age, gender and experience. Thirty sounds a lot but many people were only reading one poem. Or in two cases signing using British Sign Language to an English poem and a Chinese poem. That was one of the highlights for me.

It seems pretty obvious to me what a five minute slot is but not to a person about four years ago at a previous World Poetry Day when this person continued for fifteen (15) minutes before he was stopped. I well remember wanting to slot (slang to kill and put into a grave) him.

As an aside, I think it can be quite tricky allocating the length of a reading slot at a poetry event. Five minutes is the usual for an open mic but the problems arise when the event has a Guest Poet as a headliner. Do you give them 10 minutes, 12, 15? Leave it to them? Poetry is not like a play with a structure or plot to follow to keep your concentration (hopefully). And I’m talking about, for want of a better word, Page poetry rather than Performance poetry. And when it goes wrong it can be awful. Some of us still have nightmares about a Rapper at the Continental in Preston a couple of years ago. Half an hour. Someone told me afterwards that they had lost the will to live half way through the reading (if that’s what it was).

h) I’ve only found one reference to this meaning for slots ‘now obsolete, meant a muddy place.’ But it enables me to segue (how I have wanted to use that word) seamlessly into my poem whilst also using references to a), b) and e) above:

Hunt Monitoring

we were cold and wet
and tired and empty
and hungry and late
and silent and what

we didn’t need right then
was a Land Rover blocking
the narrow lane ahead
and what we really didn’t need

were two women slamming doors
striding towards us
rain glinting off green Hunters
hands thrust into old Barbours

stopping ten yards away
while we waited for it
not caring any more
as the attack began

So sorry for stopping you
but we just wanted to say well done
We’re so pleased you’re doing something
People don’t understand
Hunts don’t give a damn about horses
they’re cruel and brutal
The wounds we’ve seen
cuts to bellies from thorns
And barbed wire and branches
Fetlocks bleeding
I saw a twisted spine last year
Their ligaments are ruined at ditches
You’ve been up in those bogs
they ruin a horse’s tendons
They fall over stone walls
And as to their poor mouths
Sorry we do get a bit angry
and you need to get home
Keep up the good work

and off they went
and so did we

First published in Voices for the Silent, an anthology for the League Against Cruel Sports, Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2022

Thanks for reading, Terry Q

Read More