Bingo is not unique to the UK but for some reason its on my UK To Do List so finally I got Jenny to take me to a one of the bingo halls in London. Surprisingly it was actually difficult to find a centrally located one and Camden (or Shepherd’s Bush) seemed to be basically it. Well, for big well-known bingo halls anyway.

I was trying to get Jenny to explain the concept of bingo to me beforehand but I think I was getting more confused than anything and actually a bit anxious about embarrassing myself by calling out BINGO when I didn’t have the right numbers. I think I was even working myself into a nervous frenzy about making a call in the first place (though turns out I needn’t have worried too much anyway – no luck tonight!)

Jenny kept wondering why I was so excited about coming to bingo. She kept on going on about how the hall would be filled with grinners and no young ‘uns. To both our surprise there were actually quite a few young people about tonight. Of course you had the core group of older and professional people who were entertaining to me simply because they were so matter of fact about their calls and also at the general dissent in the crowd when our bingo caller made a mistake with the numbers (I think she did it about five times and I was thinking there would be a riot at one stage!)

The bingo hall was much larger than I imagined it to be and it was high tech too (well, you could go electronic with the bingo cards – though we stuck with the old fashioned paper and dabber.) Seats are quite cosy however but was comfy enough for the three of us to spread out. Other than the bingo cards that you buy at the start of the session between games you also had mini-games you could play based on the squares on your table. At a pound a pop these are the real money makers for the bingo hall. It doesn’t take much to convince yourself that its only a pound per game and you can easily lose track of how many you’ve played.

Overall Jenny, Pecan and I had a good time despite not winning. It was a fairly early night too finishing at just after 9 though we could have stayed around for the later session. Hard to remember that bingo is actually a form of gambling! 🙂