Unlucky number

The canteen raffle, and again I walk away without a prize.

When I was about fourteen years old, I was obsessed with the game of darts. Myself and my friend James Lowe would regularly head down the sports shops down Bridge Street or Woolworths (when it was still on Union Street) and spend our hard earned pocket money on another set of darts, flights or shafts.

The ultimate was a set of nickel-tungsten darts or a real Winmau Bristle Dartboard, the ones that made that lovely dull "thud" sound when the arrow hit the board. I wasn't a bad player and even considered a career in the game at one point, but my ambitions where cut short when darts was banned at school after Scott Morris, out of sheer frustration after losing a game, launched his set of darts at an opponent, landing two darts neatly in the right leg.

My hero in those days was John Lowe, who I met one rainy evening somewhere in 1983. My dad took me down to some seedy pub somewhere down near Pittodrie where John was playing an exhibition game.

We arrived late because we couldn't find the pub meaning we were stuck at the back of the room somewhere. So I don't recall seeing much (darts not being a game for people with my level of shortsightedness) but I did get to meet John Lowe afterwards. There is a picture somewhere of me standing next to him, resplendent in my blue parka with orange lining and the fur collar.

I used to watch a lot of darts.

Those epic battles down at the Lakeside between Lowe, Bristow, Deller, George. Bullseye was never off the telly in our house.

Scotland even had one top representative: Jocky Wilson. A Kirkcaldy miner, Jocky became a darts player more by accident than anything else. Unemployment from the local mine lead him to try his hand at darts, and from his debut in 1979 until 1991 he managed to reach at least the quarter-finals on every single occasion. He was quarter-finalist eight times (1979, 1980, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991) and three-times a losing semi-finalist (1983, 1984, 1987) in addition to his two World Titles.

But he faded away gently from about 1995 onwards and is pretty much back where he started.

He ended up bankrupt, living on disability allowance in Kirkcaldy. A sad end really, all things considered.

I hung up my arrows somewhere around 1987 I think. I retired at the top of my game, pretty much undefeated at school with a Winmau Bristle Dartboard and a set of nickel tungsten darts to show for my efforts. I never did get a 180, but I was the First Year Darts Champion 1983. I still have the trophy somewhere, my only record of the only competition I have ever won in my life.

Whats all this got to do with Jocky Wilson

Well, not much really except that work has become such a chore of late, something so devoid of achievement or pleasure that I look back to the days when I was actually good at something and, more importantly, had something to show for it.

And this is where Jocky and I have something in common