Big Slick - The Poker Player's Club

The World's Biggest Oyster

by Young Mr Shakey

The former holder of the title

‘Don’t judge the book by just looking at the cover.’ That’s what Mr Wilson, my old English teacher told me. Well, it may not of been him, but someone said it.

What Mr Wilson definitely did say to me one day, after keeping me in when the rest of the class had gone out to play, was that in all his long years in the profession he had never disliked another pupil so thoroughly as he disliked me.

At the time, we were studying ‘Far From the Maddening Crowd’ for our exams and I had been asked to read aloud from the book the passage where Sargeant Troy (sick gambler) is waving his sword about in an attempt to impress a beautiful young woman. (Well, haven't we all tried it?) Suffice to say, Mr Wilson did not appreciate my crass rendition, nor the sniggers I managed to engender from the other testosterone-charged idiots in my class.

Terrence Stamp played sick gambler Sargeant Troy in the 1969 critically acclaimed 'Far From The Madding Clowd'. The film, which is loosely based on Hardy's novel 'Far From The Maddening Crowd, also starred Julie Christie as Bathsheba Everard, Alan Bates as Captain Oates and Judi Dench played Queen Victoria.

For those who haven’t read it; Thomas Hardy’s epic tome about the lives of simple country folk, their hopes, their hardships and their sheep is a wonderfully rich epic, written by a master of his subject, of the English language and of the slow-play.

Photographed here with his favourite hand, a pair of Aces, Hardy was one of the best known card players of his day and was winner of the WSOP (Wessex Series Of Poker) in 1899.

The novel really has it all and considering how long ago it was written, it’s a pretty fair match for the nightly goings-on in Eastenders – just not as hurried and as far as I recall, pretty much heterosexual.

I have a hazy memory of the book’s cover being green.

It was all a very long time ago when I was in my first pair of long trousers, christened on their very first outing with a hole in each knee from falling over in the playground playing football. I say playground – though for me it would be more accurate to call it the exercise yard. As I saw it, I was doing a five stretch at the County Secondary Modern for the crime of failing my ‘Eleven-plus’ - and I've been repaying my debt to society ever since, you could say.

The trouble is, you see, just to put you in the picture, so to speak, my older brother had ‘passed-the-grammar-school’ some years before, (as my mother never stopped telling everyone, especially me), and as my turn drew near the eleven-plus grew from the eleven-plus into the ELEVEN-PLUS and began to chase me nightly through hellish dreams, like a dark, impossibly large and indestructible monster from which there was no hiding place.

When the big day finally came, I was so scared (traumatized, they’d call it nowadays and I'd probably get compensation for it too) the thought of being alone in the examination room with just my pencil and the great white question paper sent me into the kind of tizzy only a lame gnu seeking safety in numbers could properly understand.

Known to all for their peculiar ablilty to walk for hundreds of miles on their hind legs, Gnus once roamed the everglades of Northern China in their millions, before they were hunted almost to extinction by local tribesmen who sought their highly-prized short brown fur from which they made the bowler hats worn as part of their national dress. The women of China are known to have favoured washing their long black hair in Gnu's milk, which is famously rich in pro-vitamins. Rare sightings of this unusual beast have probably given rise to the whole 'Yeti' myth.

To give all non-gnus some idea, imagine, if you will, you're on the bubble after hours of gruelling play during which, (to be fair), you've not had a great run of cards. Indeed, you've had to stay pretty nimble on you're feet just to get this far. Yes, all in all you've played pretty damn well and a lump of much-needed (and let it be said, much deserved), money is now very close - so close, you are actually starting to smell it. Anyway, here you are - you are (marginally) Mr Shortstack, but you're still very much in it and feeling very much up to the challange - you're on the big blind and the blinds are just starting to pinch a little - everyone's folded round to the small blind who limps in somewhat wearily - careful observation of your opponent's body language is so important in poker - so, you decide it's time to get cute - you've played tight all day - you've got the table's respect - you'll shove in half you're stack and nick some much-needed chips - you don't spend too much time thinking about it - you act decisively and you make your move - only to see the small blind suddenly come to life, do 50 press-ups, 10 sommersaults and shove his stack in so fast he nearly knocks the table over - and there you are holding little more than your pencil and wondering if this where the phrase 'blind panic' comes from?

Ace-King - otherwise known as The Big Slick

The Dealer Button (otherwise known as the Button) is a simple device used to indicate which of the players round the table would be the dealer if the players were themselves dealing and did not have a dealer to deal for them. Some of you may remember the famous scene in 'Casino Royale' when James Bond uses a fake dealer button specially made for him by 'Q' to escape from the aligators and the evil clutches of Dr Wu.

Anyway - where was I. Oh yes, The World's Biggest Oyster and judging books by their covers and failing the eleven-plus and getting cute and being carted-off to the County Seconday Modern.

Well, Modern it was - (I think the secondary part of the school's name referred to the raggedy-arsed losers like me sent there having been officially proven deficient - remember that scene in Pinocchio when the naughty boys get turned into donkeys? ) - and modern is largely the theme of this article. (Oh yes, it has a theme.)

Right then, modern. Well, to be fair, the County Secondary Modern was a new, bright, brick and concrete school - barely 10 years old when I got sent down. It looked new on the outside; it looked modern on the inside. Framed copies of impressionist paintings hung along the pastel corridor walls. There was a stage with long red curtains – just like a real theatre. We had a science lab with Bunsen burners and sinks with strange swan-necked taps. We gazed in wonder the first time we saw a jar of silver mercury.

The world's largest pint of beer was drunk by Rodney Graham in July 2001 as part of his one man show at the Lisson Gallery, London. It took the artist 7hrs to finally down the record-breaking libation and got him short-listed for the Turner Prize. Graham is recognised internationally for his intellectually rigorous art, developed since the mid-seventies. His multi-layered and complex art includes photography, film, video, sculpture, music and text based works. It negotiates between many different identities and territories drawing connections between them, more specifically borrowing the language and isolated narratives from the worlds of science, film, pop culture and art history.

In those days, modern also meant that while the boys up the road at the Grammar School studied French and Latin, we took Spanish. ‘Yo me llamo mariposa.’

Modern meant that there was a woodwork room with a lathe and long benches with lots of vices and there was a metalwork room with a lathe and a buffing machine that could do 3,000 revs per minute and long benches with lots of vices.

Modern meant that while we endlessly filed the edges of very small pieces of mild steel and checked them with blue ink to see if they were perfectly flat, the girls went into a mysterious sort of classroom-cum-kitchen for ‘Domestic Science’, which was a modern way of saying 'cooking'.

Modern meant that while the ‘grammar school boys’ played rugger, we played Association Football and got our Football Proficiency Certificates (all except Kenneth Ayres, who I never really liked, yet felt desperately sorry for when he cried with the realization that he could never ever regain our respect, or continue to be one of us).

The great man shares a joke with fellow londoner Liz Windsor, as West Ham celebrate victory in the 1966 World Cup Final.

Modern meant that while the ‘grammar school boys’ studied the classics, we listened attentively as Mrs Poole, our history teacher, told us that set against all of the empires that preceded it, the British Empire was the biggest and alone was founded not upon conquest but on trade and was thereby superior to them all.

And while the ‘grammar school boys’ did astronomy, we sat in our modern music room singing the words of ‘Greensleeves’, ‘Boney went to Mossy Cow’ and ‘Dashing away with the smoothing iron, she stole my heart away’ from our little white song books, accompanied by Mrs Braillesford on the modern upright piano and wondering what a smoothing iron was.

Well, as I say, that was all a very long time ago, though I can still remember how to order cerveza on my holidays to Lloret de Mar. I remember the pride I felt on gaining my Football Proficiency Certificate and the surprise at being awarded my 25yds breaststroke certificate after crossing the width of the long-gone public outdoor pool with one foot touching the bottom and bouncing me along to the other side. I remember Hilton encouraging me to drop my ruler on the floor accidentally-on-purpose so that I could look up Miss Wright’s skirt and see her black knickers.

I still remember the impressionist paintings that hung along the corridor walls like windows into another, impossibly remote world of endless summers, beer and knowing women. Did they put them there deliberately to torture pubescent young boys and girls yearning for freedom and adventure, but locked inside the school gate?

I remember a globe in the geography classroom half coloured in dark pink and being proud to know that we were the good guys. I remember the silver jar of mercury in the science lab for which we never seemed to have a purpose.

A little known fact: the model for the famous 'Pax Britannica' by Auguste Poirot was Beatrix Potter who had a secret life long affair with the Belgian sculptor and part-time detective. Here she is seen in her famously dramatic pose with faithful Timmy Tabbicat at her side.

So, modern it was – our concrete and brick secondary modern school - like the rest of the bold, modern world of that time – that time being the 1960’s - or the ‘swinging sixties’ as one should properly refer to them.

Oh, Mr Wilson. You were right all along.

For it was at this very time that the Royal Oak Centre, Purley, Surrey was first conceived in a modern architects’ office, approved by modern planners and constructed using the very latest modern methods.

Yes, modern. Bright, bold, new, modern – concrete. How modern it must have seemed back then. Who would have thought of it - a shopping centre, made of concrete standing on an island in the middle of a busy main road – how brilliant – how modern. A little bit Le Corbusier’s Brasilia here in South Croydon – how bold.

The world's largest cereal bowl is to be found in Brasilia on the roof of the Kellogg Foundation Building.

But the years were not kind to Brasilia, (nor to the Grammar School, which was closed down with the abolition of the eleven-plus and turned into a police station) and the years were not kind to Purley’s own sixties white (ok, grey) elephant.

In the course researching the material for this article, the author has discovered the interesting fact that the term 'White Elephant' is in fact a misnomer. It's true name is Weit Elephant and comes from the Afrikaans word describing its mouth: weit, meaning "wide". Early English settlers in South Africa misinterpreted the "weit" for "white".

The old-fashioned builders of the past knew that wood, stone, slate and even brick all soften with time and acheive a harmony with their surroundings. Alas, as we were all to find out, concrete just sulks and grows darker and more obdurate with age.

Let’s face it, after forty years of weathering, the Royal Oak Centre looks as much at home in Purley as the Titanic would if its remains had been hauled to the surface and dumped in the middle of the road.

Or, am I being overly negative. Am I being too hard on my old school and am I being too unkind about what is after all our new home? There’s always more than one way of seeing things and – come to think of it - viewed from a different angle – and if it wasn’t so dirty - the Royal Oak centre looks not too unlike a Turner Prize winning piece of sculpture – you know - like the ones done by that lady (what’s her name) who makes inside-out casts of derelict houses – yeah? – and they are much admired and considered by many as being extremely modern.

Maybe, all those years ago, the architect of the Royal Oak Centre fancied himself as bit of a sculptor - just cut out the middle-man/woman. Well, architects – let’s face it - they’re all a bit ‘arty-farty’ – be fair.

But anyway, what I’m really trying to say is that I like to think of our very own sixties concrete horror in a different way. Ok, to describe it as a womb, might, to some, seem a little bizarre - so let’s say that I like to see the Royal Oak Centre as an oyster - in fact I think of it as the ‘Biggest Oyster in the World’. Yes, dark and crusty on the outside, but concealing a pearl on the inside. That pearl being, of course, ‘The Big Slick Private Members Club’.

The world's largest live oyster was found by pearl divers off the coast of Madagascar in 1847. It measured 45 inches from tip to appex and weighed 92lbs. Inside they found a complete pearl necklace consisting of 153 class 'A' pearls, which was presented to Queen Victoria as a wedding present and was later famously worn by Vivian Leigh in 'Gone With The Wind'.

So, Mr Wilson, it turns out that you were right all along; though of course at the time you tried to impart your wisdom, I wasn’t listening and had no idea what you were talking about. To me Hardy’s masterpiece was just a boring old book that you were forcing me to read against my will in preparation for an exam you were forcing me to sit. That’s why I wasn’t listening. I didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want some sad loser in funny clothes like you telling me what to think.

And can you please tell Mrs Braillesford that you can’t get children interested in classical music by making them listen to drivel like ‘Peter and the Wolf’ and the ‘Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy’

And one last thing, although I didn’t like to mention it at the time, (mainly, because you were bigger than me and could exact pain on me, because I was smaller than you), let me tell you now that of all the teachers I ever had, you were the one I hated the most and that is some distinction I can tell you, because I hated all you bl**dy-fascist-b*st*rd-losers. Yeah and come to think of it, like all the other stupid old maxims you constantly trotted out, (‘more haste, less speed’ – remember that one, Mr Bowden) there are always exceptions, aren’t there, that are somehow supposed to prove the stupid b*st*rd rule.

Here's me, second from the right on my way to Mrs Braillesford's music lesson.

You can’t judge a book by just looking at the cover? No. Ok. Well, what about…

John Major
Adolf Hitler
Marvin Hagler
Razzle
Disney World
Ronald MacDonald
Ronald Reagan
Old Smokey

Case proven, Mr Wilson. Thank you.

Oh, bye the bye, my old secondary modern school is now a grant maintained school and styles itself ‘A Specialist Mathematics & Computing College’ – and you can’t get much more modern than that, can you?

Young Mr Shakey