This Bogus Poetry

It’s a Friday night in October and we are sitting in the corner of a very small bar just off the Reeperbahn in Hamburg’s red light district. The bar was chosen somewhat at random as a place to shelter from the rain. As we sip our delicious bottles of Astra, we survey the following scene: The bar is mainly wood panelled. Periodically the barmaid will stand up on top of the counter and pour everyone shots. It’s a little bit rough and ready, in fact probably as rough and ready as is possible these days in the tourist friendly Reeperbahn area. At the bar, a middle aged German man seduces his wife by dancing very, very badly. She feigns mock disgust, but the hint of a smile around the corners of her mouth betrays the fact that she LOVES his bad middle aged German man dancing ways. Now of course, I am someone who cannot talk about this subject with any type of lofty position, but from what I’ve seen, German people dance quite badly. German dancing 101 The German style of dancing is very over...

I've spent the past few days on a golf course in southern Spain where I played a poker tournament sponsored by bookmaker Victor Chandler . I'd won free entry to the tournament back in the halcyon days of September when it seemed I could do no wrong at the poker table. On arrival I was picked up at Malaga airport by a driver with a card with my name written on it. This was perhaps the most awesome part of the whole trip! When I rolled up at the hotel after an hour of Spanish football chat, I was allocated a suite with champagne, chocolates, two showers and a bidet. After sampling all four, I went to dinner and met some of the fellow players. Almost all from the UK and Scandinavia, they seemed a little better than I hoped they might be, but I still fancied my chances. This was tempered somewhat after I saw the tournament structure sheet and realised the tournament would be something of a crapshoot. The next day after a visit to Gibraltar which I will write about in another post, ...

Recently I went to collect a parcel. In Germany, this is not so straightforward. After trekking across town, we locate the Berlin DHL delivery depot, nestled in between a dual carriageway and a quite frankly scary looking building complete with gargoyles and an ominous sense of authority (that now seems to have been turned into the HQ of a German Radio station). Upon entering the building we were greeted by a scene that looked like a doctor’s waiting room. All the classic signs were there. Chairs in rows of five or six with that little bit of extra space between them to stop the spread of disease. People sitting on their own, or occasionally in pairs, nervously flicking through several month old magazines whilst repeatedly glancing at the clock and eying the person who came in before them. The occasional cough or shuffle. All it needed was some posters about herpes and the picture would have been complete. My partner and crime and I join the queue for the counter and eventually get to ...

Sundays in Berlin have now settled into something of a routine. It is the big day for poker tournaments and generally I play around 15 of them in the evening, beginning at 6:45CET and often going on until four or five in the morning depending on how I do. There is generally a lot of money in play and it can be quite stressful. The day is usually one for a big win or a big loss, or most likely - scrambling to break even. In contrast, Sunday daytimes in Berlin are a very laid back affair. Many shops and business are in Germany are closed, so the city has quite a sleepy vibe. People go out to have a big Sunday breakfast, read the papers and wander around. I am currently living in the Prenzlauer Berg area of the city. It's a nice, if somewhat gentrified area - not as edgy and hip as Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain, but certainly a very interesting part of the city to live in. Our current apartment is on the fourth floor (no lift!) and is about 100 yards east from where the Berlin Wall use...

Well I guess I'm officially a professional online poker player now. Things have been going really well and I've been grinding online tournaments 2-4 nights a week. At the time of writing, I'm up to #27 in the Pocket Fives UK rankings. I've won a few tournaments and a couple of weeks ago just missed out on a triple crown for winning three tournaments with a prize pool of over $10,000, on three different sites within a week. But one night recently things did not go to plan. A couple of hours into a session whilst playing around 7 or 8 tournaments and with around $1,000 in play, my apartment where I'm staying in Berlin had a power cut. It's pretty much a nightmare scenario and I knew that every minute that the power was out was costing me money, as my equity in each tournament slowly diminished. After lighting some candles and waiting for about five minutes, I decided I had to make a run for it. I quickly packed a bag and jogged 500 metres or so down darkened stre...

"Send em all back, that's what I say" "Who?" I replied, somewhat taken aback. "The Muslims, all of them, send them back" Add caption This was my first verbal exchange at the 1/5 Spread Limit Seven Card Stud game at the Mirage in Las Vegas. As an opening salvo, this was somewhat of a statement of intent. "But send them back where?" I asked in response. "HOME" replied the elderly lady, now clearly getting agitated as she discarded her hand on fourth street. There was heavy action of a $2 bet from a man across the table, who from first glance, it was difficult to distinguish whether he was alive or dead. "But most Muslims in the UK were born there" I stated matter of factly, as I brought it in with my three up. "SEND EM' BACK" was the unequivocal response from the lady. Clearly we weren't getting anywhere fast in this debate. The elderly moustached man sitting next to me now chimed in, ...

All I'm saying is: I wrote this in April - http://thisboguspoetry.blogspot.com/2009/04/detailed-analysis-of-song-down-under-by.html The BBC published this a few days ago - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8178913.stm I will inform Tristan, my lawyer, when he gets back from his family break in Tuscany. IS THIS WHAT I PAY MY LICENCE FEE FOR??????