Bingo or bust

Tonight was bingo night at the Legion in Banff. Yes, you read that correctly. I've managed to get this far in my life without ever actually playing it, but tonight, due to a variety of circumstances too dull to go into, I missed the film I intended to go and see this evening and instead, I lost my bingo cherry.

Picture the scene. A smattering of Banff's older generation dotted around the Legion clubroom - which, even in Canada, looks exactly like you'd expect - cheek by jowl with a large number of the town's young, up-for-anything, transient population. $9 pitchers of beer on the go. A bingo caller who looked exactly like Seth Rogen's cop in Superbad, though with little of the easy-going charm. A group of volunteers who, as well as collecting and checking cards, doubled as bouncers.

Bingo, as you may already be aware, is an inherently dull process. Any activity that comprises calling out numbers, slowly, for a protracted period of time must be so, even if said activity is interspersed by people winning (small amounts of) money. So as the hours passed and the beer began to take its inevitable effect, the crowd began to find their own ways of relieving the boredom and trying to get into the spirit of the occasion. The bingo caller and his accomplices became more and more agitated at the alcohol-induced jollity that was spreading around the room. The announcements of 'please can you keep your voices down' and 'out of respect for those who have died for our country, please can you refrain from using profanity' became more frequent and warnings were given to people for tearing up beer mats and putting feet on chairs. Finally, three people, including our friend Jamie, were forcibly ejected into the -19 degrees outside for using their dabbers not just on their bingo paper, but on each other instead.